


we felt like we could fly

by fairytaleideals



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Flashbacks, M/M, Memory Loss, Pining, but it'll take a while, communication is key
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-23 15:31:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7469091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytaleideals/pseuds/fairytaleideals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a few things in the world Sebastian knew just had to be true: he loved Hunter with his entire being, and no matter what happened, a part of him always would.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back y'all, and I bring super cliche amnesia fic! Not going to to lie to you, this one was inspired by reading some comments on an old fic that were berating me for making people cry, and I kinda wanted to do that again.  
> A couple quick things: This fic is going to be making use of flashbacks and will be regularly bouncing between the past and present, but I think it'll be fairly clear and labeled. The 'now' sections will be in chronological order, the 'then' won't necessarily be, but it'll be less confusing than it sounds.

_then_.

The best thing about summertime was convincing Hunter to be lazy with him.

It started with the convincing Hunter that they needed to make use of the Clarington’s lake house, a process which usually took longer than it should have, because Sebastian had literally the worst boyfriend ever. It usually involved pointing out that there was no doubt some sort of yard work or something similar that needed to be done, because apparently just having a lake house and being able to vacation there wasn’t reason enough to actually do so.

But eventually, they would end up out at the lake, and the first evening, Hunter would generally let himself relax without fighting it at all. The drive in generally got to him; he had never been a fan of driving long distances, but he also wasn’t the biggest fan of the way Sebastian liked to speed and tended to get a little bit distracted sometimes while he was driving, so while he let Sebastian drive sometimes, he preferred not to. It worked out for him, of course, because it meant that Hunter was tired and willing to just crash on the couch for the night.

The first full day there, though, Hunter would be out of bed before Sebastian woke up. And admittedly, that wasn’t that far out of the norm. It was pretty usual for him to get up and go take a shower, or go for a run, or, if he was in a particularly sweet mood, make breakfast then bring it to Sebastian in bed.

But of course, when Sebastian woke up, he could hear the faint hum of the weed whacker coming from outside. And so began the need to convince Hunter that he was on vacation.

He dragged himself out of the bed and grabbed their bags, needing something to busy himself with. He knew that he at least had to let Hunter get _something_ done before he tried to interrupt him, or else it wouldn’t work and even if it did, Hunter would just be grumpy.

He grabbed Hunter’s things first, tucking them away in the closet for him to put on at his leisure. He frowned when something fell from the pocket of one of Hunter’s jackets and he bent down to investigate. It was a tiny velvet drawstring bag, and he furrowed his brow as he picked it up and pulled the strings open to peek inside.

… _No way._

He looked down at the ring in the bag for a long moment, his mind quickly working to come up with any other reasonable explanation as to what he was looking at. It couldn’t _really_ be an engagement ring, could it? Of course, his mind kept coming back to that, because, well, wasn’t the simplest explanation usually the one?

He snapped himself out of his surprise and pulled the strings tight again, put the bag back into the pocket it had fallen out of, and tried to push it out of his mind as he finished unpacking their clothes for their stay. He wasn’t supposed to have found it, and no good would come from overthinking it.

Once he’d finished up, he went to the kitchen, grateful that they had at least managed to go to the store to buy cereal and milk before coming in the night before. He poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat out on the patio, looking out and watching Hunter as he did yardwork.

And, admittedly, as much as he hated the fact that Hunter sometimes got so stuck in his head, in his need to constantly be getting something done, he didn’t quite hate this part. Hunter looked good in the morning sun, his sweat making his shirt stick to his skin until it annoyed him enough that he just took it off entirely and Sebastian was able to enjoy the way he looked like he was practically shimmering.

Eventually he got tired of just looking and not touching, so he put his bowl away in the kitchen and went out to the yard. “Babe, take a break,” he called out.

“I’m almost done.”

“Take a break,” he repeated as he walked up behind where Hunter was raking something, wrapping his arms around him and trying to nudge the rake out of his hands.

“Stop that, I’m sweaty, and busy,” Hunter protested, but he willingly let go of the rake and moved his hands to hold Sebastian’s arms in place around his waist.

Sebastian chuckled softly, leaning into his and pressing his lips to his neck. “No can do, Hunt, you know I love it when you’re sweaty.”

“You’re unsanitary,” he said.

“You like me anyways,” he said, giving Hunter’s neck a slow lick and chuckling softly as he felt a small shudder running through his boyfriend.

“Maybe,” he said, a laugh coloring his voice.

“God, you’re cute as hell,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh, pulling back from Hunter and taking his hands, pulling him over closer to the water, towards where there was a hammock set up.

“Bas, no, I really do have to get that done,” he said, shaking his head as he followed after him a bit reluctantly.

Sebastian turned around for a moment, pressing his hands to Hunter’s chest and leaning in to kiss him slowly. “C’mon, we’re going to be here all week, you’ve got plenty of time to deal with whatever bullshit chore list you’ve put together for yourself.”

“It’s not bullshit,” he mumbled as he kissed him again.

“Mhm, sure,” he said, kissing him again. “Listen, I promise I’ll help you out with whatever needs doing if you take a break right now.”

“Can I at least take a shower? I’m gross.”

“Later,” he said, shaking his head. “ _We_ can shower later.”

Hunter laughed and rolled his eyes at Sebastian softly. “Insatiable,” he mumbled, finally allowing Sebastian to finish dragging him over to the hammock where they carefully navigated settling in.

“You shouldn’t be surprised by that at this point,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh, curled up against Hunter and wrapping an arm around him, his hands moving over his side slowly.

“I guess you’re right. I’ve been putting up with you for so long, I should be used to it,” he said with a soft chuckle, running his fingers through Sebastian’s hair as he rested his head against Hunter’s shoulder.

“Yeah, you definitely should,” he mumbled, nuzzling his face against his skin. He closed his eyes and just laid there for a moment, a smile forming on his lips as Hunter wrapped his arms around him.

“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Hunter mumbled, his hand slipping up Sebastian’s back and rubbing over each notch of his spine. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“You know exactly why you out up with me. I’m the best and you love me,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, I guess I do,” he said.

“Exactly. And in any case, right at this very moment I am improving your life. No one enjoys working. Especially not in the hot sun.”

Hunter shook his head slightly, chuckling. “I find some pleasure in it.”

“Oh, right, you’re dumb as hell, so of course you do.”

“If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you so much,” he said, kissing the top of his head.

“You’ve tried, and you’ve failed,” he said with a soft laugh.

“Damn you for being so charming.”

“Sorry,” he said with a grin, though it was obvious to both of them that he was approximately zero percent sorry.

They fell into a comfortable silence after that point, Sebastian closing his eyes as he nuzzled against his boyfriend. He took in a deep breath, appreciating the way his skin smelled after it had been kissed by the sun, the mingled smells of dirt and sweat clinging there as well. So yes, Sebastian hated Hunter’s sense of duty, but he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t like the after effects, the way Hunter was warm and cuddly and smelled so damn nice.

Part of Sebastian ached to say something about the ring, to tell him that he had found it and he was perfectly happy to put it on and let Hunter do the actual asking part at his leisure, but he held himself back. That would be better.

After a while the silence was broken by a soft snore coming from Hunter, and though Sebastian knew that he shouldn’t let him just fall asleep out here, he couldn’t help it. They were so comfortable, and he felt tired, too, and eventually he let himself relax as well, drifting off to sleep.

He woke up with a sunburn covering his back, aside from a white strip of skin where Hunter’s arm had been resting. And if there was any doubt that Sebastian wasn’t the only asshole in the relationship, Hunter spent a good five minutes just laughing about it and taking pictures, the smug bastard that he was, who didn’t burn but rather just tanned.

But Hunter took him inside and laid him down on the bed and straddled his hips as he rubbed aloe over his skin, so he couldn’t complain too much.

* * *

 

 _now_.

Sebastian took risks these days. The passage of time was a terrifying thing and he was coming to realize that he wouldn’t always be young and void of real responsibilities and free to do whatever he wanted and, well, even be able to do those things when he wanted to. He wasn’t young enough anymore to be able to write off his behaviors as just being a stupid kid who didn’t know any better, whose brain hadn’t developed past dumb decisions, but that was alright, because frankly he didn’t need to explain himself to anyone. Some days he felt like he was falling apart, and if he just did this thing, it would be okay.

Sometimes it was bigger than others. Maybe he would get on a big stretch of open road and he would see just how fast he could make his car go; what good was it having a fancy sports car if you weren’t going to ever treat it like one, right?

(And it really wasn’t his fault that sometimes, like when he’d go back and visit Ohio and the roads were nothing but long flat stretches of corn fields upon corn fields as far as the eye could see, just begging for his foot to get heavy.)

Or maybe he would go into a store and grab something and walk off with it without paying, even though he knew it was such a punk ass kid thing to do. He limited himself to cheap things, like a bag of chips or something similar, and he told himself that it was practically a victimless crime.

Or maybe he would drink. Too many drinks too fast without enough food or water before or in between. Too many drinks with different liquors and mixers that always made him regret it later, but not enough to not do it again when the world got too heavy.

Sometimes when he got into one of those moods, he could hear Hunter’s voice in the back of his mind, warning him off of whatever he was doing. Hunter, telling him to turn down the radio or else he would damage his hearing. Hunter, wordlessly giving him bread before he went out and tagging along just to make sure he drank a glass of water once in a while and standing between him and the tequila until he got something else in his system because _I am not dealing with your hungover ass, I’m just not._

But most of the time, he was able to just drown it out. He could turn the radio up just a little bit more and suddenly he couldn’t hear himself think, let alone allow the other man to climb into his brain, as well.

And some days, he needed a little bit more and he just needed to not think about it, at all.

He was watching the news and there was some piece warning people about the dangers of cliff jumping. If he was a more responsible person, he might have looked at it and thought “yeah, it does look fun, but maybe I shouldn’t.” But he wasn’t that person, and the clips they showed make it look like fun, and so instead what he did was grab his computer, look up the closest place he could go, send off a quick message ( _cliff diving, yes or yes?_ ), and he drove.

It was a couple of hours away that he had to drive, because even though his life had led him out west, he had never been too much for anywhere that was _too_ tropical, but eventually he ended up at a good spot. It wasn’t anything quite like the places in Hawaii that they had shown on the news, but it was better than nothing and there was a fairly good-sized crowd of people taking the jump. He hung around for a bit before he went ahead and did it, just watching some other people and chatting with whoever was around him. But eventually he got tired of waiting and he felt the itch and so he went for it.

At that point, things got blurred.

At first, everything was fine, everything was going well, until it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was that had hit his head, or rather what he hit with his head. Hell, he wasn’t even fully aware of it. Time had seemed to slow down in the seconds after he took the leap off of the cliff and when he anticipated he would be safely hitting the water, but when things did go sideways, he wasn’t sure how or when or where it happened. He was faintly aware of the moment he went below the surface of the water, the sounds of rushing water and loud voices from above him saying _something_ he couldn’t quite make out, hands reaching out and grabbing him, blackness.

The next thing he was aware of was a room that was way too bright. He tried to roll over, or at least bring his arm up to cover his face, but he felt weighed down in an almost surreal way. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, slowly processing his surroundings. There were white walls, a green curtain, an empty chair beside him, monitors around him, hooked up to him. Flowers. He was in a hospital.

“What in the fuck.”


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick little note: I'm going to be doing some stuff for Huntbastian week this week, so I'll be getting back to this fic next week. :)

_then._

_I wish you could see all the stars out here. Town is so far away and our neighbors are few and far between, and they have their lights off anyways, so it’s like perfect darkness out here. Stepping outside in the middle of the night feels like when you’re a kid and your elementary school class takes a trip to the planetarium. I know you’re not much for stargazing, but I think if you were here you might make an exception. At very least, I’d hope you would humor me, and you would let me show you the constellations and explain them to you. Even the constellations remind me of you, the way the stars spattered across the sky reflect your skin, so marked with freckles. I swear to god, you’ve got Ursa Major walking on your back._

_It comforted me for a moment this morning to think that you’re looking up at these same stars. But you’re not, really, even if you ever take the time to slow down and appreciate them (which I don’t blame you for not doing); there’s too much light pollution and you’d never be able to see half of what I can on a clear night. Thinking about it almost made it feel_ more _lonely. I miss you, and I love you._

Sebastian had never felt quite as completely and utterly _gay_ as he did the first time that he and Hunter were separated for any significant period of time. He could handle weekends away pretty well, and over the summers and holidays that they had spent apart, he could handle it pretty well through constant contact via text messaging and Snapchat and anything else they could use. Sure, it wasn’t anything close to what it was really like to be with him, and on quiet nights all alone he would almost feel a physical ache because Hunter wasn’t there and he wasn’t holding him and he wasn’t going to be there to fall asleep with.

But this was on an entirely different level. Hunter called it a vacation, but Sebastian wasn’t sure that he could consider it that because what in the hell kind of vacation took place out in the middle of the woods where there was nothing and no one around, and no cell phone service to be found? The cabin that his friends had rented didn’t even have wifi, and the end result was this: Hunter was gone for an entire month and the only sort of contact Sebastian had with him was in the form of long winded text messages whenever he happened to go into town.

It was miserable.

Sebastian tried not to let himself get too sentimental or miss Hunter too much, but all told, it was kind of difficult. He missed his boyfriend like hell and it just felt wrong to be apart from him, like there was some sort of cruel force in the universe that was keeping them apart and not just a lack of cell phone towers out in the wilderness of Colorado. He told himself that it was no big deal and he was overreacting, but there was just something about it that just sucked and made him feel way too emotional.

The next time his phone went off with a message from Hunter, he didn’t even bother to read it, his eyes catching a few words, something about a bear sighting. He just immediately pressed the call button.

“God, that was fast,” Hunter said in lieu of a greeting.

Sebastian sat down on the kitchen counter (almost expecting Hunter to just _know_ and tell him to get off of it immediately, like he always did) and chuckled softly. “Didn’t want to miss you.”

“I’m not going to be able to talk long,” he said.

“That’s alright. Just wanted to talk to you a little bit while I knew I could.”

“You just wanted to hear the sound of my voice,” Hunter said, and he could just hear the laugh that he wasn’t quite letting out.

“I didn’t say that,” Sebastian said, though he knew that, ultimately, they both totally knew that that was what this was about. He fucking missed Hunter.

Hunter did laugh that time, and god it was a good sound. “Okay, sure. You didn’t,” he said. “So, how’ve you been?”

“Better than ever,” he said. “It’s great having the apartment empty without you here. Crazy parties, every damn night.”

“You know I would kill you if that was the truth,” he said.

“No you wouldn’t,” he said with a soft laugh, shaking his head. “You love me, and you know I’d clean up after myself.”

“This would be the first time,” he said.

Sebastian laughed softly. He didn’t know how to convey it over the phone without outright saying it, but good god did he love Hunter and how much he got him and how their senses of humor lined up. Generally he got the point across as best he could by just blowing him. “There’s a first time for everything.”

“I don’t think today will be the day, though.”

“Well, of course not,” he said, grinning to himself. “I wouldn’t bother cleaning up until you’re about to come back, duh.”

“Oh, of course. I don’t know why I didn’t just assume that,” Hunter said.

It took Sebastian a moment to respond to him because he could just picture Hunter’s face as he spoke, could practically see his eyes rolling at Sebastian. He had never actively paid much attention to anyone’s mannerisms, but somehow along the way he had come to know Hunter like the back of his hand. It was kind of nice, but at the same time it was a little bit terrifying, the little reminders like that he was in this so deep.

“Bas? You still there?”

“Oh,” Sebastian said, Hunter’s voice having brought him out of that train of thought. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just saw something out of the corner of my eye that distracted me.”

“Passed out partygoer that crashed on the couch last night?” he suggested with a laugh.

“Yeah, you know it,” he said, shaking his head to himself. “Gotta kick them out.”

“As long as no one is in our bed, I’ll turn the other cheek.”

Sebastian chuckled softly and shook his head. “That’s too kind of you, babe,” he said. “But it’s too late, the bed has already gone to shit. Just absolutely covered in jizz and vom.”

“I can believe the jizz, actually,” he said with a soft laugh. “You’re like a goddamn teenager.”

“I’m so insulted, babe.”

“It’s really not my fault you jack it all the time and literally always make a mess.”

“Hey, you said you only get service out there when you’re in town, right?” Sebastian asked, a grin forming on his face. “Are you having this conversation, out loud, in public?”

There was a moment of silence and then: “Fuck off.”

“Also, notably, it totally is your fault that I jack it all the time. You’re hot, and you don’t feel like having sex every time I want to have sex.”

“The same goes the other way, too,” Hunter said, chuckling softly. “But I control myself.”

“Yes, but at what cost?” he asked with a grin.

“I end up washing the sheets a lot on your behalf, so yeah, you do win this one.”

Chuckling softly, Sebastian asked, “Okay, also, speaking of jacking it, how’s that been going for you?”

“Sebastian,” he responded, his voice firm.

“A month is a long time to go, babe. I’m just asking in the name of—”

“Sebastian.”

“Honestly, babe, there’s no shame in it.”

“I’m going to talk to you later, Sebastian.”

“Oh, hey, wait,” he said quickly, not wanting him to hang up yet.

“Yeah?” Hunter asked.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“And I love your dick. I cannot understate that, I love your dick.”

“Okay, Sebastian, buh-bye.”

“Bye, babe.”

* * *

_now._

Something felt wrong. He didn’t notice it at first in the moment that he woke up, a bit too wrapped up in the fact that _holy shit_ , he was in a hospital. But the more he got used to that being the truth of his situation, the more he knew that something was off, even if he couldn’t figure out what it was or why exactly he had that feeling.

Before long, a nurse and a doctor and his mother came into the room and it seemed like all of them decided to start to speak to him at once, all on top of each other. He looked between them one by one but ultimately couldn’t get his brain, still sluggish from sleep and overwhelmed by everything unfamiliar around him, to distinguish any words from the sounds they were all making, not all at once.

Eventually they settled into allowing just the doctor to speak, asking him some general questions about how he was feeling and that sort of thing, and it was fairly easy for him to answer them and follow along for at least that much. Sebastian glanced over towards his mother as the doctor continued to speak to him, taking in the concerned expression on the woman’s face as she pulled up the chair beside his bed and gripped his hand in hers.

The doctor was still talking, saying a lot of things that Sebastian didn’t really understand and/or care about (though he did know that he should have cared more and at least tried to listen; you don’t just wake up in a hospital because you’re doing just fine, and generally even after walking out of the hospital you needed to heed doctor’s orders in some way) but his mind was elsewhere. Anything that was important enough, he figured, his mother was surely listening and she would remind him about it later. So, for starters, why the hell was he even here? He couldn’t recall anything having happened that would lead to him ending up in a hospital apparently coming out of a coma of some sort.

And, probably more importantly, where the fuck was Hunter? Although he wouldn’t admit it, it was pretty unsettling to be sitting there in the hospital without having him there beside him, without it being Hunter that was the one that was there to listen to the important things that the doctor was saying, because he knew Sebastian well enough to know that he wasn’t going to bother with it.

When he had broken his arm during his senior year of high school, Hunter had insisted on going to the hospital with him and sticking close to his side the entire time he was being treated, despite numerous protestations on Sebastian’s behalf (though maybe, deep down, it did help just a little bit to have him around, if for no other reason than just to have him to talk to). And that had been before they were even together, and it was comparatively a much smaller sort of thing. With that in mind, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that he wouldn’t be there with him now, several years and a few declarations of love later.

He looked over at his mother, cutting off the doctor as he asked her, “Where’s Hunter?”

Her face turned downward for a moment, and time seemed to slow down for a second as the thought occurred to him that _fuck, if I’m in a hospital, what if I’m not the only one here? What if he didn’t make it to the hospital?_ She looked over towards the doctor, as if looking for some assistance in whatever she was about to be saying. “Bastian, you…” she started, sighing. “He isn’t… He’s not here. We, um, he doesn’t know you’re here?”

“What? Why wouldn’t he?” he asked, furrowing his brow. If Hunter was in fact hurt or dead, this had to be the worst possible way to try and say it, and he told himself that his mother knew better than that. “Why wouldn’t you tell him? He’s listed as an emergency contact for me.”

“You took him off,” she said.

“No… I didn’t?” he said, frowning. “Why would I do that?”

His mother just looked at him for a moment, frowning and looking at him in concern. It was a bit unnerving; Andrea Smythe was not the sort of person to ever have trouble with finding words, or speaking her mind, and he had gotten that from her. “You haven’t seen Hunter in…” she trailed off, sending another urgent look over towards the doctor.

Then the doctor was talking again, drawing his attention away from his mother and their conversation again as much as he wanted to get back to that conversation, to get answers from her, because he was feeling pretty damn gaslighted right now. His confusion only grew at the doctor asked him several questions, such as how old he was (twenty-two), what his relationship to Hunter was (boyfriend), what the last thing he remembered before waking up here was (going to bed with Hunter, probably?).

It was confusing for a long moment, and Sebastian still wasn’t feeling any better about the fact that no one seemed interested in telling him what the fuck was going on, until finally the doctor told him what he felt was going on, and suddenly it made sense.

Retrograde amnesia.

Memory loss.

Apparently, none of those answers were accurate. He was twenty-five, his relationship with Hunter was something no one seemed to want to talk to him about though he could guess it was something less than boyfriends, and he had in fact gotten hurt cliff diving.

Shortly after, another doctor came into the room and continued to ask him some questions, apparently further testing his memory loss and, with the help of his mother, nailing down how much time he had lost, in better detail than just a vague three-ish year span.

As it turned out, he had lost plenty of milestones in that time. The graduation he was getting close to in his memory, moving across the country for law school. That sort of thing. The news didn’t bother him as much as he knew it should have, his mind still stuck on the fact that apparently at some point in that three years he had gone from being downright disgustingly in love with Hunter to not seeing him and having taken him off of his records as an emergency contact. It just didn’t make sense. Aside from that, he supposed, it didn’t feel real yet. Nothing felt like it was too different yet, and though he was sure that once he left the hospital it would sink in, for now the only tangible he had was, well, Hunter.

Once the doctors left the room and it was just him and his mother (and his father, apparently? When had he even gotten there?), he laid his head back and closed his eyes for a long moment.

“Are you okay?” his father’s voice, gentle and concerned in a way that it rarely was, came through his ears as a hand took his again. “Is your head hurting?”

Sebastian opened his eyes again, looking between his parents and letting out a long breath. “Can you… Fuck,” he sighed, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t want…” He stayed silent for a long moment, a frown forming on his lips. “Call Hunter.”

“What?” his mother asked, furrowing her brow at him.

“I want you to call Hunter,” he said. “I want him to be here.”

There was a moment of silence after that in which it seemed that neither of his parents knew exactly what to say, and maybe there was some more information that they weren’t letting him in on. They seemed to be having a silent conversation, but eventually his father nodded and his mother stood up, pulling her phone from her pocket.

“Bastian, I can’t promise that he’ll want to come out here, or to see you at all,” she warned him.

“No, he will,” he said, unable to believe anything else would be the truth. “Even if he doesn’t want to, you can convince him.”

She didn’t seem all too sure of it, but she headed out of the room anyways, navigating her phone and evidently bringing up Hunter’s contact information. If nothing else, it helped to know that she did still have it; things couldn’t be _that_ bad.

“If he doesn’t come, don’t be too disappointed,” his father warned him. “It’s… It’s a long way, and it’s hard to say how it’ll go if he does come all the way out here.”

“It’s Hunter,” he said firmly, shaking his head. “I don’t know what it is that happened there, but it doesn’t change anything.”

“I just want you to keep in mind that things aren’t going to be exactly as you remember them.”

He was going to reply but was cut off by his mom coming back into the room, nodding. “He said that he’ll be here as soon as he can,” she said as she took her seat.

For a little while, they just sat around and chatted, his parents catching him up on things that had happened in the past few years. It felt a little bit surreal when they pulled out pictures that featured him doing things that he clearly did but he had no recollection of doing, but overall he didn’t let it get too him too much. It still didn’t really feel real, and his mind was too laser-focused on waiting for Hunter to arrive.

And finally, he did. There was a quiet knock on the door and everyone’s heads snapped up in that direction. There was a moment where no one said anything, Hunter and Sebastian just looking at each other. Eventually the Smythe adults got up from their chairs and excused themselves, his dad saying something about giving them some privacy as he shut the door behind them.

Hunter walked into the room slowly, lowering himself into the seat Sebastian’s mother had just been sitting in. “Hey,” he said after a far-too-long silence.

For a moment, Sebastian felt a pang of regret for bringing Hunter out here, or at least for not having taken his father’s words seriously. Yes, he remembered Hunter and their relationship a certain way, and yes, in that time he had felt like nothing would ever change how he felt about him, but… Something clearly had. But then he told himself he was being ridiculous, that he had loved Hunter _so fucking much_ and there was no fucking way that he wouldn’t always feel at least a sliver of that. And feelings could always come back, right?

Instead of saying any of that, he just said back, “Hey.”

“So… Your mom told me what happened,” he said, his eyes slowly running over the length of Sebastian’s hospital bed.

“Yeah. It, ah… Sounds like I must’ve had a good time.”

“Yeah. Must’ve,” he said, nodding slowly. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked back at Sebastian, saying after a long moment, “You’re… In your head, we’re still together.”

“Yeah, we are,” he said with a small nod, watching him closely to see his reaction.

Hunter let out a long breath, just looking at Sebastian. “It’s been almost a year, Sebastian,” he said, shaking his head. “You… I haven’t seen you in practically a year.”

“What happened with us?”

There it was, the question of the hour, the question that he needed answered more than anything right now.

But of course: “Do we have to talk about it?” Hunter asked, and his voice just sounded so exhausted, already, and as much as he wanted to talk about it, he convinced himself that it could wait, at least for a little bit.

“Okay, no, it’s fine,” he said. “We don’t have to.”

Hunter gave him a small grateful smile, and maybe that made it a little bit more worth it. “Thanks.”

The long pauses between their words were deafening, and Sebastian wasn’t sure that he had ever felt more awkward around anyone before. “So…” he started, racking his brain for anything to save the conversation. “If, I mean… What have you been up to, for the past year?”

“Same thing I was before,” he said with a small shrug. “I’ve been working at the park service.”

“Ah,” he said, nodding slightly. “I guess that suits you.”

“Yeah… It’s been good,” he said.

And… that was about it as far as conversation topics that Sebastian had ready. He had no idea what else he was supposed to say. Most things they could talk about were either three years old at this point or had already been decided as being off limits. As much as he wanted things to be normal, Sebastian knew that he wasn’t actually himself in this moment, not the himself of now. He didn’t know how much had changed, but at very least, there were some things that he should’ve known that he didn’t, and it made having any sort of conversation with Hunter more difficult.

“I don’t know why I came out here,” Hunter said eventually, cutting into the silence. “I mean, fuck, this is… So awkward.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” he protested.

“Yes, Sebastian, it does,” he said, frowning. “We broke up. A long time ago. We are two completely different people now, living two different lives. I don’t know what I expected coming in here, but this is exactly what I should’ve expected.”

“Hunt, come on,” he said, forcing himself to ignore the way Hunter’s frown deepened when he called him by the nickname. “We can talk about it, and we can make it better.”

“We can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not how it always worked.”

“What happened?” he said again. “Did I cheat on you, is that what happened?”

Hunter looked stricken for a moment, then he rose to his feet. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here, I knew it was a bad idea,” he said. “Get well soon, Sebastian.”

“Hunt,” he said quickly, wanting to stop him, but it was too late.

Hunter took one last look back at him, mustering a smile, and then he turned and left the room, the door clicking shut behind him.


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wowow I'm really sorry this took so long! I'm going to try and update more regularly but I will give fair warning that a new semester just started (plus new responsibilities as an officer of one of my clubs) and I'm about to start a new job, so... Time will tell.  
> Also, I'm lowkey assembling a playlist of songs that kinda tie to this fic for me. If anyone wants to see that, let me know.

_then._

The first apartment they had together was a mess, but Sebastian loved the fuck out of it. The landlord was kind of a douche and it wasn’t in the best location, but rent was cheap and it was _theirs_.

It seemed to be a universal fact that in any given friend group, one apartment was always chosen to be The Place where everyone hung out. It just so happened that their friends liked their apartment and its location, and also tended towards property damage. It did not help in the slightest that this was during their sophomore year of college (and onward), where you’re still young enough and drunk enough off of freedom (and other things) to not worry too much about security deposits or having your neighbors hate you.

Chaos reigned, is the point here.

But good god, when everything wasn’t just falling to shit, when it was just Hunter and Sebastian alone in the apartment, it was perfect.

Upon moving in, they had noticed that, though they did not have a patio in the traditional sense, what they had instead was possibly better: one window slid open and had no screen in it, opening straight onto what easily _could’ve_ been a patio. It was a flat section of roof that seemed to only be accessible from their apartment, so they took it upon themselves to claim it as their own.

The first time they climbed out onto it Hunter did so less than gracefully and for the next week there was a large, angry bruise on his thigh from partially falling on the window ledge while climbing out, and Sebastian laughed at him mercilessly.

Much like the rest of their apartment, it wasn’t the most pleasant place to be. The material that covered the “floor” of their makeshift patio was black and gritty and clung to your skin and clothes, so it was easy to tell what body part touched the ground.

The most vivid memory Sebastian had of that apartment was the second night they were there, the first night they had discovered the opportunity that was the area outside of their window. They had spent much of the day getting moved in and by the time they were done and had ordered a pizza and had their fill, nighttime had fallen. The apartment was hot even in spite of the AC running (an issue that would recur for as long as they lived there), and the cool breeze under the night sky was a comfort.

While they later took further advantage of the situation and brought out patio chairs and a side table to make the space a little bit more usable (and somehow never ran into any trouble for it, something that Hunter had expressed his doubts about when the idea first came up), that first night it was just the two of them and the hard, dirty ground.

“This is kind of disgusting, Bas,” Hunter commented as he sat down, making the decision to, at least until he could get around to doing the laundry, sacrifice his shorts and sit down beside his boyfriend.

Sebastian laughed and rolled his eyes, leaning over and kissing Hunter’s cheek. “You know what else is disgusting? Us,” he said. “We are _so_ sweaty.”

“You mean I’m sweaty,” he said, chuckling. “I am pretty sure I did all of the heavy lifting.”

“Details, details,” he said, lifting his hand and waving it as if batting Hunter’s words out of the air. “It’s really not my fault that you look so good when you’re sweaty and you’re carrying heavy things.”

“Have I ever mentioned how lucky you are that you’re cute?” he asked. “I don’t know how I’d stick around otherwise.”

Sebastian chuckled and moved in closer to him, shifting to lay down and ignoring Hunter’s attempts at protesting the action because of how dirty the entire back of his shirt would get, laying his head on Hunter’s lap. “I know I’m lucky,” he said. “Though I’m not sure that me being cute is the only thing I’ve got going for me.”

“Yeah?” he asked with a laugh, the look on his face saying that he already knew in advance that asking was going to be a bad idea. “Like what?”

“My enormous dick, for starters,” he said, sending them both into peals of laughter.

“I _knew_ you were going to say that,” he said. “I fucking knew it.”

“And you let me do it anyways. That’s truly touching, Hunt,” he said with a laugh.

“I just know that it would most likely cause you physical pain to _not_ bring up your dick regularly.”

Sebastian just grinned at him, lifting a hand to poke him in the ribs. “No, _you_ bring up my dick regularly,” he said with a wink.

“Oh, god,” Hunter groaned, shaking his head. “You know what? I am making this just way too easy for you, so I think I’m going to go ahead and say absolutely nothing for a little bit.”

“Okay,” he said with a soft laugh.

True to his word, Hunter let a silence fall between them, but it was a comfortable one, both of them calm and happy to finally be settled into their apartment for the most part. They finally had a place that was all their own and it didn’t matter that their bed was a queen-sized mattress on the ground and the bedroom didn’t hold much more than said mattress, it was theirs, with no other roommates there to crash their nights together and ruin the mood. If they wanted alone time and their friends were around, they were fully allowed to just tell them to fuck off (and in the coming months, Sebastian did in fact do so, with no shame, several times).

Sebastian found himself getting distracted, looking up at the stars above them and then down at the street below their building, where cars passed by every now and then, the hour of night apparently having cleared the road for the most part.

He felt Hunter’s fingers in his hair and when he looked up, he found that Hunter was looking at him. He opened his mouth, but before he could make a comment about how cheesy Hunter was being, his boyfriend was speaking instead.

“You know, I have waited so fucking long to say this,” Hunter said with a soft chuckle, his fingers still toying with Sebastian’s hair. “I guess I was kind of afraid of what might happen, which I guess is kind of crazy, given the fact that you were the one who talked me into this whole thing, so it’s not like I was going to scare you off...”

“Hunt,” he said when he paused for a moment, looking up at him and raising an eyebrow. “Gonna get to the point any time soon?”

Hunter laughed softly and if it were lighter out there may have been a hint of a blush on his face, but under the cover of darkness, if it was there, no one was any the wiser. “Right, right,” he said. “I just… I love you, Bas.”

Sebastian sat up at that, part of him having known that logically that was what had to be coming (especially since, god, they had been dating for a couple of years now and they were fucking _living together_ , it was a logical thing to say), but it felt a lot different to actually hear the words. He shifted in closer to Hunter, his hands cupping either side of the other man’s face as he kissed him.

When they had to pull back, Hunter looked at Sebastian with a small smile. “So, does that mean the feeling is mutual?”

Rolling his eyes fondly, Sebastian snuck another quick kiss from his lips. “Yes, dumbass,” he said. “I love you too.”

And after that, they went right back to kissing, which devolved into the two of them laying on the ground making out interspersed with whispered “I love yous” exchanged straight from one set of lips into the other.

Eventually Sebastian had to admit that this was not exactly the best environment for their chosen activity, and if they were going to have celebratory ‘I love you’ sex, then it would be best not to do it not only outside but also where nasty black grit could get just about anywhere. Hunter got to his feet and helped Sebastian up as well, stopping kissing for just long enough to get back inside through the window, giddy and inseparable like teenagers after prom.

In the morning when light filtered back into the bedroom through the windows, they discovered black marks covering their light colored sheets, having transferred from their skin to the fabric underneath their bodies. Hunter just laughed and stripped the mattress to wash the sheets with a comment about how it probably needed doing anyways because sex sheets were disgusting, still a bit too much on cloud nine from the night before to be too upset about the potential stains on their nice sheets.

If Sebastian were to be completely honest, he felt like those smudges were a badge of honor and he was quietly disappointed when they completely disappeared in the wash.

* * *

 

_now._

Hunter didn’t come by to see him again, which, while not entirely unexpected, was still a pretty great disappointment. Even knowing that things would not have been the way they were in Sebastian’s head, it still ached to know that Hunter was around, at least somewhat, and he was _around_ for Sebastian to actually see him.

He knew better than to complain too much. His mother and father were with him, and in any case they weren’t going to be keeping him long. Physically, he was essentially fine, though of course a little bit worse for wear after his fall, and though he would likely come in and try to make some effort towards regaining his memories, there was little that could really be done, so there was no point in keeping him somewhere where he was miserable.

For now, though, while everything got all figured out, he was definitely some degree of miserable and/or bored most of the time, all the while trying to get some sort of answers as to what exactly had happened with him and Hunter. No one seemed all too interested in providing those answers.

His mother brought his laptop to him from his apartment, and in quiet moments he, with what detective skills he had, tried to do some investigating into what was going on with his life. Facebook, unfortunately, did not hold many answers for him. While it did hold evidence that backed up what he had been told (not a lot), such as a complete lack of recent pictures of him and Hunter as well as apparently no longer being listed as friends, much less being in a relationship. He was relieved to see that he was labeled as being single, though he knew logically that if he _had_ been in a relationship, he likely would have had another visitor.

His Facebook profile was, honestly, a little bare. It was clear that he didn’t use it for a whole lot, just occasionally posting important updates on his life or once in a while a particular article or something would catch his attention. Most pictures and other posts were ones that he had been tagged in by friends and family. Beyond that, it seemed that he mostly used Facebook to spectate.

It was a relief when Sebastian was allowed to leave the hospital and go home, though he hadn’t really considered what home would be.

Home was, of course, no longer the apartment he had lived in with Hunter.

It wasn’t even in the same town, though it wasn’t far.

It was a quiet little one bedroom that didn’t have a lot of character, which Sebastian supposed was all he really needed.

His mother insisted that he needed her to stay and look after him for a bit while he adjusted to the way his life was now, citing that having a familiar face around had to help. Ultimately, he decided against arguing with her.

It was alright having her around, though he felt bad having her sleeping out on the pull out couch in the living room. She insisted that it was fine and he was the one who had just gotten out of the hospital and deserved a real bed, but he still felt like a bit of an ass about it.

For the time being, though, he was pretty alright with just hanging out around his apartment with his mother watching over him. He was supposed to, in theory, be in classes, but given the fact that the past few years were all but gone from his head, there seemed to be little point to that exercise.

Occasionally he would see something in his apartment and it would spur a memory, but it was never anything important and often enough was just a vague _feeling_ about the particular item or view. Nothing ever came back to him to fill in any of the more important blanks, but at a certain point he had to just expect that not to happen, just like he needed to stop expecting that Hunter would show up and tell him it was all a prank, or at very least explain to him what the hell had gone wrong.

Speaking of expectations, it seemed that any and all expectations were shot to hell.

A couple of days after he returned home from the hospital, his apartment was set upon by none other than Nick and Jeff, two people that, in all honesty, Sebastian never would have anticipated that he was still in contact with (and also would not have expected to still be together, but that wasn’t really his business). His mother left so that it was just the three of them sitting around in the apartment, and all told, Sebastian decided that them coming by had to be a good thing; Jeff, and Nick to a lesser extent, was a talker by nature, and if either of them happened to know about Hunter, be it information about their breakup or what he had been up to since, it was bound to come out.

“You know, for some reason I was expecting you to look more beat up,” Jeff commented as he sat down on the couch upon his arrival, sliding a box containing a cake onto the coffee table (and if nothing else, Sebastian had to admit that they were good people).

Nick shot him a quick glare. “You can’t just say that.”

“Why not? It’s basically a compliment.”

He chuckled but shook his head disapprovingly before looking back at Sebastian. “Sorry we couldn’t actually make it out to come see you when you were in the hospital,” he said. “We’ve been out of the country, and we called your mom and she told us not to come home early. But this was our first stop now that we’re back.”

“Not that she didn’t want us there, she’s a lovely lady,” Jeff cut in brightly.

“You guys called my mom?” he asked a bit incredulously, raising an eyebrow as he looked between them. “How did you even get her number?”

“We’ve had it for a while,” Jeff answered with a small shrug. “I mean, I don’t want to brag or anything, but when you moved out here we reconnected, and when your parents visited we really hit it off.”

“Right…” he said with a slow nod, still feeling distinctly like he was missing some pieces that made that statement make sense, but he wasn’t all too worried about it at the moment.

“So, anyway, memory loss,” the blond carried on. “That’s pretty intense.”

“About three years, they said?” Nick asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, thereabouts,” he said with a small shrug.

There was a moment that passed in relatively awkward silence, where it seemed clear that they were working out the implications of that time frame in their minds.

“I kind of feel like I should tell you how sorry I am about Hunter all over again,” Nick said with a small frown.

“Nick, stop, look how sad he is now,” Jeff said, reaching over and giving him a light smack on the side. In Sebastian’s defense, he didn’t think that he looked that sad, though of course he also couldn’t see his face, so maybe.

A glint of light on Jeff’s hand caught Sebastian’s attention with the motion, and he frowned as he came to notice that on each of their left hands they wore matching rings. As much as he wanted to discuss what they knew about his breakup with Hunter, that distracted him enough that he had to stop the conversation in its tracks.

“You’re married,” he said and there just barely wasn’t any bitterness in his tone. In what kind of world did those two stick together and get fucking _married_ while he and Hunter apparently couldn’t make it last?

“Yeah,” Jeff said, letting out a soft laugh as he looked down at his hand, holding it up for a moment. The way his smile grew for a moment at the reminder that he was married told Sebastian that it was a relatively new thing.

“How long ago?” he asked.

Nick looked a little bit awkward, sighing. “That’s… About a month ago,” he said.

“So you’re just coming from your honeymoon,” he said.

“Yeah,” he said with a small nod.

The whole thing felt a little bit too awkward for what it was; who in the world was even slightly reluctant to discuss their marriage when they were a newlywed. He considered it for a moment before a thought occurred to him. “I’ve been looking at my Facebook a lot, and I haven’t seen any pictures or anything of a wedding,” he said. “It sounds like we might be pretty close now, so…”

“We _are_ pretty close,” Jeff assured him quickly. “But, um… You didn’t come to the wedding.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow, and when neither of them started to say anything, he gestured for them to go on.

Eventually Nick sighed and spoke. “You didn’t come to the wedding.”

And that didn’t really answer any questions. Jesus Christ, when did his life turn into a Lifetime movie or something, every revelation bringing up several questions?

“It wasn’t, like…” Jeff continued, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts on how best to put it. “You didn’t not come because we had any sort of disagreement or anything, and we weren’t upset that you didn’t come. I mean, we were, but we weren’t surprised, we had talked about it.”

“But _why_ didn’t I come?”

“Because we invited Hunter,” Nick said after a moment’s silence, looking down at his feet.

“Okay…” he said slowly, letting out a long breath. Finally, they were getting somewhere. Progress. Progress was good. “So, things with me and Hunter. They ended badly?”

“I don’t think so,” he said with a small shrug, looking over at Jeff for a moment as if looking for help explaining it.

“It wasn’t like you thought you were going to cause a scene or anything,” Jeff said, shaking his head. “I don’t think it was like that.”

“You don’t think so?” Sebastian asked, feeling like he was pulling teeth. “Do you not know how it happened, then?”

Nick shook his head. “Not really,” he said with a frown. “You didn’t really talk about it that much, honestly. Like, I don’t know. You were never too big on PDA or anything—” Sebastian nodded, having known that to be true “—but it was kind of clear to us at the end there that there was something going on that was wrong with you two. But when it actually happened, it was just kind of… You told us, and that was that.”

“It was clear that you were hurting, though,” Jeff said, his brows furrowing. “I mean, you’d said that it was mutual, but I got the feeling sometimes that it wasn’t _that_ mutual.”

“Because I wouldn’t ever want to break up with him,” Sebastian said, shaking his head.

Sighing, Nick shrugged. “You don’t know that,” he said. “None of us know that, because we don’t know what happened. For all we know, you were just as content to not be with him anymore. And when you weren’t sad, you seemed fine.”

“You went out with us a lot more,” Jeff said, leaning back in his seat. “We hung out with you more than Hunter after the breakup. As in, like, we didn’t really see him much at all.”

“And you invited Hunter anyway?” Sebastian asked, his voice coming out much harsher than he had intended it to.

Nick took his tone in stride, though, shrugging. “You insisted on it,” he said. “At first I kind of thought that it was going to be some sort of master plan, like, you’d do something to win him back at the wedding.”

“Which we wouldn’t have minded, by the way,” Jeff said with a bright smile. “You guys were the best together.”

“We were,” Sebastian agreed with a small nod.

Letting out a laugh, Jeff grinned at him. “You know, it’s weird, actually,” he said. “Like… You’ve gotten a lot better, obviously. You broke up, like, a year ago, a little bit more maybe, so obviously you’re not still super hung up on it. But… Interacting with you like this, it’s kind of… spooky. But in a really good way. Just, like, I didn’t realize you were different now than you were with Hunter.”

He looked over at his husband, who nodded. “Definitely,” he said. “Which, I mean, you’re good both with and without Hunter, but…”

“You can say it,” Sebastian said, shaking his head. “I’m the best version of myself when I’m with him, that’s just a fact.”

“God, you’re so cute,” Jeff said with a grin. “Why were you never this cute when you were together?”

“I’m not cute, I’m just really needing to figure out what happened with me and Hunter,” he said. “You saw him at the wedding, then, right? Did he say anything?”

“It’s funny, you asked a pretty similar question when we saw you after the wedding, too,” Nick said with a soft chuckle. “Because, see, we took off for our honeymoon like a week after the wedding, and we had a little makeup thing with you since you missed out on the real one. Granted, of course, when you asked it was a very casual sort of thing, unlike now, when you’ve got a mystery on your hands.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, nodding slightly. “But what was the answer?”

“He didn’t say anything about you,” he admitted after a moment, shrugging. “I mean, he did look around a bit like maybe he was looking for you? But it’s tough to say whether he was looking for you to find you or to, you know, avoid you.”

“Fuck, okay,” he said with a small nod. He should have known better than to expect anything else, given the fact that clearly even he hadn’t been too keen on seeing his ex again, but still. Some part of him was just counting on the thought that maybe just maybe he could salvage this and make something work with Hunter again.

“I wish that I could tell you more, but that’s really all that we know,” Nick said, sighing softly. “We did try to get you, either of you, to talk about it, but you’re both kinda hard asses when it comes to things like this.”

Sebastian nodded slightly, giving him a smile. “It’s okay. If you don’t know, you don’t know,” he said. “I’ll just see if I can… get Hunter to come see me again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah,” he said with a small nod. “He came to see me when I was in the hospital.”

“Well, that sounds good, right?” Jeff said. He paused for a moment and then asked, “Are you going to try and get back together with him?”

Sebastian nodded. “Until I get my memory back and/or find out some great big awful reason we broke up, I am going to stay convinced that it was a bad call.”

“Mm. So you’re not going to just trust your past judgment?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I do dumb shit all the time.”

“That’s true, he does,” Nick said helpfully. “Like going cliff diving. What the hell, Sebastian?”

“I am sure that I had good reasons for that one,” he said with a shrug.

From there the conversation devolved a bit, just talking a bit about their honeymoon, and some random stories and things from the past couple of years. As much as he hadn’t expected it to be very enjoyable, he actually really liked having the two of them around, even without them having been able to give him much information about Hunter. They were able to, at least for a little bit, distract him from thinking about the situation, and that helped immensely.

When they left, promising to come back whenever he wanted them to, he was able to sit in the quiet of his apartment for a little bit, thoughts of Hunter returning to him. He tried to ignore it but eventually he embraced a cold hard fact: until he at least knew what had happened, he couldn’t let it go.

He grabbed his phone, finding that, luckily, Hunter’s number was still stored on it. He hit the button to call, bringing it to his ear.

It rang two times, then the call disconnected.


	4. Four

_then._

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What is there to talk about?” Sebastian asked from where he was curled up in his bed, rolling over slightly to look at Hunter.

“I kind of suspect that there’s a lot,” Hunter said, moving in closer to him and laying down alongside him, something that the twin bed they were on did not make a whole lot of space for, especially when one party was not feeling particularly cooperative.

The silence that fell then was long and uncomfortable, with Sebastian trying to find a way out of the conversation (the fact that they were in _his_ dorm room did not help things very much) and Hunter trying to find a way to get his boyfriend to talk to him.

“I’m sorry,” he tried.

“Yeah, you probably should be,” he said with a small nod. He paused, closing his eyes for a moment and then sighing, shaking his head. “Okay, fine, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yeah?” Hunter asked, giving him a small smile. It wasn’t very much, but it was at least a start, and Sebastian was no longer pouting at the wall like he had been for a good bit now.

“Yeah,” he said with a small shrug, sighing and scooting over to make more room for Hunter on the bed. Hunter responded by crowding up against him again, but this time in a more comfortable, affectionate way. “I am not exaggerating when I say you’re the only thing holding me together sometimes.”

Smiling softly at Sebastian, he ran his fingers slowly through his hair. “You do the same for me,” he told him. “I know you didn’t cheat on me.”

“Of course I didn’t,” he said with a small nod, and he had to give him credit for sounding to self-assured even when he was clearly not in the best of moods.

It wasn’t like this was the first time it had happened, of course. There had been a few times in the past where rumors had circulated about Sebastian and some random guy hooking up behind Hunter’s back, and each time they had sat down to discuss it and the fact that that had _not_ happened was always easily established. It had been a while, but now it was back again, with the latest rumor being that the reason Sebastian was so “cozy” with a particular barista was because they were fucking.

(The truth being, of course, that all there was to it was that Sebastian ran on coffee most mornings, and going into a coffee shop at the same time every day just did tend to lead towards a strange sort of friendship forming between customer and server.)

Hunter moved his hand down, snaking his arm around his boyfriend and holding him in close to him, their chests pressing together and their noses nearly brushing. “So… Talk to me? Let me know what’s going on in your head?”

Sebastian let out a long breath, closing his eyes for a moment and shaking his head. “It’s really not a big deal.”

“You’re in a bad mood now, so it’s big enough,” he said, shaking his head.

“Alright,” he said, huffing out a sigh and slowly opening his eyes again but turning his head to the side. He didn’t say anything for a second, his eyes focusing up at the ceiling instead of looking a Hunter. “I just… thought that it would be different.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “What would be different?”

“We… Ugh. Okay, so… high school,” he started slowly.

Hunter nodded, gesturing for him to carry on. “High school. Dalton.”

“Yes,” he said, pausing again to collect his thoughts. “Everyone there knew me, knew what I was like. Plenty of them had experienced firsthand what I was like.”

He didn’t really need to be told what Sebastian meant by that.

“But then we left high school. We’re halfway across the fucking country and we’re with all kinds of new people, and I thought, you know, people would stop with the whole ‘Sebastian is going to cheat on Hunter’ thing,” he said, shaking his head slightly.

They hadn’t ever talked about it. There had just always been an understanding that people at Dalton were going to (generally well-meaningly, but it was still a dick move either way) make comments about how it was just a matter of time before someone else caught Sebastian’s eye. It was also understood that Sebastian fucking _hated_ it, and for the most part it was something that their friends and most of the Warblers knew not to do. But still, it was something that he heard, fairly often, and no amount of ignoring it changed the fact that some people genuinely thought that it was the truth.

“There are always going to be jerks around, Bas,” he said, rubbing Sebastian’s side. “That doesn’t change anything, I still know that you would never actually cheat on me.”

“It just… fuck,” he said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I know that you know that. That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?” he asked him.

If nothing else, Sebastian had to give Hunter credit for knowing him pretty well. He had a pretty good feeling that Hunter knew exactly what the problem was and how he was feeling, but also had enough of an understanding of Sebastian to know that this was just something he needed to talk his way through. “The point is that our relationship isn’t any of their business,” he said. “The point is that they don’t know jack shit about you and me, and if they genuinely think that I have done something wrong, they should come to me about it instead of going behind my back.”

“They thought that they were being helpful,” he said.

“Bullshit they did,” he said, letting out a soft laugh that was a little bit more bitter-sounding than Hunter would have liked. “Some people have this weird, like, hero complex, but not even out of the good of their hearts.”

“Then why?” Hunter prodded, his hand sliding down over Sebastian’s hip and lightly rubbing his skin as his shirt rode up.

“Stop that, you’re very seductive and it’s distracting,” he said with a soft laugh, rolling his eyes fondly and continuing when it became clear that Hunter did not intend to stop. “Because everyone wants you to like them, I guess.”

“I hope they realize, though, that telling me my boyfriend is cheating on me, regardless of how truthful it is, is bound to get them on my shit list,” Hunter said with a laugh.

“Good to know,” he said, closing the distance between them for a moment and pressing a soft kiss to his lips. “And yeah, in fairness, I think that even if Paul had come to talk to me about it rather than jumping to conclusions and talking to you, I probably would’ve been pretty pissed at him, too.”

“Which you’re well within your rights to,” he said.

Sebastian hummed softly, closing his eyes for a moment. Sighing, he asked, “Do you think it’s going to be like this forever?”

“Like what?” he asked. “People getting jealous of how hot and amazing we are together and making things up in their heads to try and mess us up? You and me, being perfect together and cuddling and having amazing sex?”

“Hm… I guess all of that is fair, though I was just going for the thought that, you know, people think I’d look someone else’s way when I’ve got you.”

“People are dumb,” he said with a laugh, kissing his cheek.

“I mean, shit, babe, my grass is so fucking green,” he said.

Hunter chuckled softly. “Doesn’t grass that’s growing really well usually indicate that there’s, like, shit underneath, fertilizing it?”

“Wow, fucking rude,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Here I am, trying to compliment you, and you’re being insufferable.”

“ _You_ are insufferable,” he said, pressing a quick kiss to Sebastian’s lips.

“If I’m so insufferable, why am I always the one who is stepping out on you?” he asked with a grin.

“Probably because I’m awful in bed?”

“Oh, no, that definitely can’t be the case, even in their messed up minds,” he said with a laugh. “If you were bad in bed, we would’ve broken up long before now.”

“Wow, really?” Hunter asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re only in this for my body?”

“Of course,” he said with a soft hum, running his hands over his chest. “Just your body, nothing else.”

“Mhm, that sounds true.”

“Very true,” Sebastian said, giving him a soft kiss. “And yeah, I guess the words that come out of your mouth sometimes are pretty okay, too. Just as an added plus.”

That was something that he liked about Hunter, something that he wasn’t entirely sure that he would be able to find with someone else: Hunter knew when to push him to talk about things, sure, but he also knew when to take a step back and let them laugh a little bit. He knew exactly how to change Sebastian’s mood at the drop of a hat, and have him forget all about whatever was going on if only for a moment. It was a skill that he had never realized that he appreciated in a person until he actually had Hunter around, doing it for him.

“You know, if I was a less self-assured person, I would be worried when you say things like that,” Hunter said, chuckling softly.

“Yeah, but you are self-assured,” he said. “And you also know that I waited for-fucking-ever to have sex with you when we first got together, so clearly it’s not _all_ about the sex.”

“Fair point,” he said.

“Rest assured, babe, it’s, like, eighty percent a joke when I imply I’m only with you for your dick,” he said.

Hunter laughed softly and shook his head. “It doesn’t count as an implication if you outright say it.”

“Shh, don’t,” he said softly, leaning in and pressing his lips to his, and if Hunter was at all bothered by Sebastian derailing his point he didn’t protest it, leaning into the kiss.

When he pulled back, Sebastian looked at him with a small grin. “Okay, so, I have a question,” he said. “Why do you suppose it’s me?”

“Hm?” he hummed, looking at him with a raised eyebrow, not entirely following him.

“Why it’s me that is always the one cheating on you,” he said. “Because I mean, there was, at very least, a somewhat logical reason for it when we were in high school. But now, the people that we hang out with don’t really know about all that, they really only have ever known us _as_ a couple, so, logic that one out for me.”

“I have no idea, Bas,” he said, shrugging.

“You’re no fun,” he said, leaning in and pecking his lips. “I mean, really think about it. What sorts of qualities does a person have that makes them more likely to step out on their significant other?”

“Being an asshole?”

“Exactly,” he said with a grin. “And we are both _huge_ assholes.”

“In a different way, I suspect,” Hunter said, humming.

“Details, details,” he said, waving off his words. “So, assuming that we are both the same level of asshole-ness, then what is it that makes _me_ seem like the prime choice?”

“Because everyone wants to fuck you,” he said with a soft laugh.

Sebastian chuckled softly, looking at Hunter with a grin. “See, that’s kind of the point I was getting towards.”

“Should’ve known you’d use this to brag on yourself,” he said, rolling his eyes fondly.

“Hey, you said it, not me,” he said, shrugging. “But, if you had let me finish, the thing is, there’s a couple of ways of looking at this. People assume that if one of us were to cheat, it would be me. But god, what does that say about you?”

“That I’m too much of a goody-two-shoes and they can’t imagine me doing you wrong?”

“Maybe that, too,” he allowed. “But, what it says to me is that apparently people must think that either you _can’t_ get someone else, or, as discussed earlier, you’re awful in bed which is why I am so insatiable that I have to seek out others to take care of my carnal needs.”

“You really know how to paint a word picture,” he commented.

“Oh no, a real word picture would have been much more graphic.”

Hunter chuckled softly and rolled his eyes, shifting and laying his head against the curve of Sebastian’s neck. They laid like that in silence for a bit before Hunter mumbled into Sebastian’s skin, “Laugh about it all you want, but I know it bothers you. And that’s okay. I’ll never believe them.”

Sebastian didn’t know what exactly to say to that, his thoughts and feelings on the matter much more complex than he really would have liked to talk about even if he had the right words, but it was alright, because he knew that Hunter got it. “Thank you.”

* * *

 

_now._

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it was really, absolutely driving Sebastian completely nuts not knowing what had happened to his relationship.

The thing was, he knew fully well that it shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, and there were probably more important things for him to concern himself with. He knew that most likely he would just have to wait for his memories to come back and when he did, he would probably just accept the fact that he and Hunter were over. After all, that’s what he had done, right? It was just a fact that he had not seen Hunter in a year; no one in their right mind would still be carrying a torch for someone that they hadn’t seen in that long. It just didn’t make sense.

But of course, Sebastian was stubborn and he drew a line in his mind between the person that he was in his mind now and the person that he apparently was before the amnesia. And when a week had passed where he spent his days doing basically nothing but hanging around in his apartment and having small outings out of town with no sign of his memories coming back, he was having trouble finding it in himself to actually care about much of anything else. As far as he could tell, his life was incredibly boring without Hunter in it.

Which is how he ended up talking in circles with Nick and Jeff, trying to get them to figure out something, anything, that would help him figure out what had happened, even though he knew fully well that when it came to things like this, he and Hunter were both fairly private people. They both would have kept any and all details about the breakup and the reasons behind it close to their chests. It was infuriating.

Nonetheless, he bribed the pair with chocolate and pasta, getting them to tell him whatever they could about the end of his relationship and the time immediately afterward and the time period beforehand, making them go over the same stories and conversations multiple times, trying to look at everything from every angle.

The new information he had gathered was this:

They were never much for PDA, of course, but towards the end of things it was actually almost nonexistent. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for Nick and Jeff to come over to their apartment and either Sebastian or Hunter was inexplicably missing, a contrast to earlier on when they were rarely _not_ together. Jeff admitted that they hadn’t really thought too much of it at the time, since they were both fairly busy people.

The entire time that they had lived here, they had stayed in one apartment.

(This made sense, given their history of moving pretty much every year in college; they hated it and they continually swore that they were sticking with wherever they were permanently, each time they moved into a new apartment.)

When they broke up, Sebastian had ended up moving about half an hour away into a new apartment that was entirely new to him and was a little bit closer to Nick and Jeff, though neither could confirm that that was a factor in the decision (they said they liked to think that it was). And apparently in all of that, Hunter had been allowed to keep their apartment and had continued to live there in the year since. In all honesty, that all sounded perfectly fine to Sebastian; he was never really one to like to keep himself surrounded with things that reminded him of the past, especially not his failures. If Hunter wanted to keep the apartment that had housed the fall of their relationship, he was welcome to. Sebastian tried not to let himself think too much about what it might _mean_ that he had chosen to keep their apartment; in reality, it was probably just a matter of it being easier for him to not have to move.

And, of course, if everything went the way that Sebastian wanted it to, maybe he could just move back in with him and slip back into the life that they’d made for themselves. He knew that that was kind of a vain hope, but can’t a man dream?

All of this information brought him to now:

“You can’t just show up at his door. That’s not you, that’s not either of you,” Nick was saying.

Jeff shook his head, wrapping an arm around Nick’s neck and pulling him closer to him just in order to slap a hand over his mouth. “It doesn’t matter if it _wasn’t_ who he was, all that matters is that right now, in this time and place, Sebastian Smythe is a man on a mission, a man of great convictions who will go through grand displays of affection to win Hunter back.”

“Maybe don’t word it like that,” Sebastian said, shaking his head slightly.

“But that’s exactly what it is,” he protested.

“Maybe,” he said with a small shrug. “I mean, ultimately, yes. But honestly at this point I would be happy to just at least have some answers.”

“But you’ll be okay if that’s all that it turns out to be?” Nick asked, a note of concern tinging his voice. “If you talk to Hunter and you find out what happened but you realize that it’s something you can’t come back from? What if he isn’t ever going to take you back?”

Sebastian didn’t need him to say what it was that he was thinking. He knew that the thought of him cheating had no doubt occurred to all of them, and to be perfectly honest, if that turned out to be the case he wasn’t sure that he could really forgive himself for it, either. He had spent so long convincing himself that that was something he would never do, and it stung to think that his friend was accusing him of it without outright saying the words, but the fact remained that he really didn’t know. Maybe things had changed in the years that he was missing. Maybe he was a total asshole now.

“Yes. Even then. I just have to know,” he said.

It was after a bit more careful deliberation that Nick and Jeff finally wrote down the address on a slip of paper for him, and he spent most of the evening trying to think about how it would go when he showed up on Hunter’s doorstep.

Their doorstep, in another time.

By the time the following afternoon arrived, he wasn’t letting himself think about it too much. This was happening, and whatever Hunter ended up saying, it was beyond his control. If whatever it was was totally life changing and the breakup was totally justified, then he would take it in stride.

That didn’t stop him from panicking for a minute as he sat outside in the parking lot, his mind racing with all the possibilities of his this would go (fuck, what if Hunter had a new boyfriend? Or girlfriend?). He took in a deep breath and tried to clear his mind, telling himself that overthinking this wouldn’t help anything. He just needed to do it.

He got out of the car and went up the steps to the apartment, the motions feeling familiar even though he didn’t remember anything about the place. At very least, his muscle memory enabled him to know which door was Hunter’s before he actually saw the number on the door. He brought his hand up to knock, hoping for a split second that maybe Hunter wouldn’t be home, until he heard motion coming from inside.

He felt a strange calm come over him as Hunter opened the door and he finally came into sight. This was Hunter. He was the love of his life, and nothing was going to change that, even if the circumstances between them had changed. Everything was going to be fine.

Hunter looked surprised to see him, and there was total silence between them for a long moment in which Sebastian wished more than anything else that he could read minds. “Sebastian,” he said finally.

“Hunter,” he said back with a small nod.

“You… look better,” he said.

Chuckling softly, Sebastian nodded. “Yeah… That happens when you’re not in the hospital.”

“Right,” he said, and another several awkward seconds went by. Things never should have been that awkward between them.

He couldn’t have ever imagined things being this off kilter between them and he didn’t know what to do about it. It seemed that neither of them did.

Eventually, Hunter seemed to remember himself a little bit and shook his head, giving Sebastian a polite smile (it was fake, god, he knew that Sebastian knew every bit of his soul, didn’t he? He didn’t need to have bothered with it and to be perfectly honest, Sebastian probably would have preferred that he hadn’t) and stepping back. “Come in,” he said. “Can I get you anything to eat or drink?”

Sebastian shook his head, stepping into the apartment and looking around. It made his heart ache.

For a second he could just imagine it, the way it must have looked before there was any furniture or decorations there, and he wondered in the back of his mind if that might be a memory rather than his imagination; it didn’t really matter if it was. The walls were light colors, creams and pastel blues, and the floors were hard wood that had the benefit of not groaning under his shoes. One wall was covered in brick, and everything about it screamed _Hunter and Sebastian_.

The decoration and furnishings filling the apartment also felt right. It was all homey and comfortable, and Sebastian wished more than anything that he could just curl up in the arm chair and read a book or cuddle with Hunter, and he was sure that he had many times before.

There were spaces in the apartment that felt a little bit off. Spaces where there clearly had used to be things there, spaces that Sebastian could picture things from his own apartment fitting into nicely. He didn’t comment on it as he took a seat on the couch. “No, I’m alright,” he said, shaking his head.

“Okay,” Hunter said as he took a seat as well, facing Sebastian and looking at him for a moment, seeming to be studying his face.

“I wanted to—” “I can probably guess why you’re here.” They spoke at the same time and after a second’s pause, Hunter sighed and carried on.

“You want to know what happened,” he said.

“I do,” Sebastian said with a slow nod.

“Right,” he said, letting out a sigh and rubbing his hand over his face. “You actually lasted longer than I expected you to. I figured you would be here as soon as you got out of the hospital.”

“Well, there was a certain amount of talking myself in and out of it,” he said with a small shrug. “But I just… I need to know.”

“I know you do,” he said. “I… I can only imagine what all you’ve been coming up with in your head.”

“Is it better or worse than what I’m thinking, would you say?”

Hunter shrugged, looking over at him and giving him a sad smile (real. Very achingly, painfully real, and Sebastian never wanted to see that look on his face again). “I guess it really depends on what you mean by better or worse.”

He wasn’t really sure how to answer that. He wasn’t sure what he wanted Hunter’s answer to be, either. At the very least, he just needed to get down to the fact of things on one very specific question. “Did I cheat on you?”

All of the air seemed to escape Hunter then, and he laid his head back against the cushions of his chair for a long moment. He sighed, running his fingers through his hair slowly. “God, Sebastian, you…” he said slowly, shaking his head. “I knew that was the first place you’d go.”

“So, is it true?” he asked.

“No,” he said immediately, his voice firm in a way that Sebastian wasn’t really expecting. When he looked at Hunter, there was pain in his eyes. “No, you didn’t. You never would have done that. You… You were always perfect, Bas.”

Sebastian furrowed his brow at that, his frown deepening. The confirmation that he hadn’t cheated on Hunter should have relieved him, but it didn’t. He didn’t feel any better, and he didn’t get to enjoy the nickname on Hunter’s lips. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Were… Were you not perfect? Did you…?” It had never occurred to him that it could have been the other way around. Hunter had never been that type of person.

“No, I didn’t,” Hunter said, shaking his head. Sebastian wasn’t sure that he had ever seen him look so very, entirely exhausted. “Sebastian… It doesn’t always have to be that someone did something wrong.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, feeling more and more confused by the second.

“Sometimes two people just don’t work,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t have to be some big thing, some great big mistake. I know that’s what you’re thinking, but that isn’t it. You’re looking for a story, but I don’t have one to tell you. We stopped working.”

“We… stopped working,” he echoed slowly, furrowing his brow.

Hunter nodded. “It was just sort of a gradual thing. We didn’t just wake up one day and stop loving each other. I,” he paused, looking at Sebastian with a small frown like he wasn’t sure that he should finish his sentence. “I don’t know if we even did stop loving each other.”

“We didn’t. I didn’t,” Sebastian said quickly, shaking his head. “I could never.”

Hunter didn’t say anything for a moment, and Sebastian didn’t know what to make of it. “I… I know that you think that. But Bastian, you didn’t live it,” he said. “And I know you don’t want to think it, but… Two people can be great for each other and love each other, but it just doesn’t work out.”

“Then we just didn’t try hard enough,” he said, shaking his head.

“We tried, Sebastian,” he said. “We changed everything up and it still just wasn’t… It got tired. So tired. We just didn’t have anything to say to each other anymore. All the passion was gone.”

“That still really sounds like we weren’t trying,” he protested, sitting forward in his seat. Maybe this would be easier than he had anticipated it being. If one of them had hurt the other in a great big way, there might not have been a way to fix it. But this, no, this would be easy. Sebastian was nothing if not passionate, he could surely bring that feeling back. “Hunter, we made a mistake.”

“I’m sure we made plenty of mistakes,” he said, and the look in his eyes begged Sebastian to stop, but he couldn’t.

“We can fix them,” he said, reaching out and grabbing Hunter’s hand.

They lingered like that for a moment, Hunter’s eyes going down to Sebastian’s hand on his and drawing it back. “I can’t do this,” he said, shaking his head and rising to his feet. “I’m sorry, Sebastian, but you don’t know this situation like I do. You’ll remember, and you’ll understand.”

“Maybe I will, but that doesn’t mean that I’ll change my mind about it. We should not have broken up,” he said, getting to his feet and taking a step towards Hunter.

“We needed to,” he said. “It was better for both of us. We had a good thing while it lasted, and we both need to just move on.”

Sebastian looked at him for a moment, searching his face, but everything about him made his words final. He was good at that. Sighing, Sebastian took a small step back and nodded. “Okay,” he said, looking at him with a frown. “It… It was nice seeing you.”

“You, too,” he said.

And with that, Sebastian left. No hugging, no kissing, no crying. No joyful reunion. Just the fact that nothing had gone wrong, but rather nothing had gone right. They’d given up.

That night, replaying the conversation in his mind, he couldn’t help but get stuck on Hunter’s words: _we both need to just move on_.

Both.

It wasn’t over yet.


	5. Five

_then._

They had made the decision to apply to colleges separately. They didn’t speak a word about anywhere they were applying to each other, didn’t even speak a word about what sorts of programs they were looking to get into since that might provide some insight into where they were looking at going; of course, they both did pretty much know what the other was doing, because you don’t date someone for that long and _not_ know what their core passions and aspirations were.

Sebastian hated it. He hated not having the knowledge of what was going to be their relationship in the next four years. He had heard through other people (he wasn’t actively asking them, okay? Some of the Warblers just liked to talk and forgot about Sebastian and Hunter’s entirely mutually agreed upon decision to not talk about colleges) that Hunter was applying to colleges fucking _everywhere_.

(And okay, to be fair, it wasn’t that Sebastian hadn’t agreed to it. He had. When Hunter had first presented the idea, it felt like the right thing to do and he had agreed entirely. But then the reality of it had set in and he felt a pretty damn high level of regret.)

He started having the regular stress that they would end up on completely opposite ends of the country. What if he ended up going to the east coast and Hunter ended up out west? God, what if Hunter ended up in Florida? He would die in a hurricane, or wrestling an alligator, and Sebastian wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

He tried not to let himself think about it too much. He tried to remind himself that keeping it a secret was for the good of both of them, and their relationship, and it wasn’t going to be too long before he had made a decision and Hunter had made a decision and then he would just _know_. And even if they did end up on opposite coasts, that didn’t automatically mean that their relationship was going to fall apart.

He made his decision early. He applied early action and got in and he committed right away. And sure, that made a certain amount of stress go away, but it did nothing to alleviate the concern that he had just signed a contract to be an hours-long plane ride or days-long drive away from Hunter, one that he could not back out of anymore.

But then, finally, finally, about a month after Sebastian made his decision, Hunter came up to him one afternoon and took his hands and led him away to _have a conversation_. Sebastian was simultaneously incredibly relieved and impossibly nervous, and he isn’t completely sure that he didn’t vomit then and just repress the memory. He found that pretty easy to believe, too, though he was pretty sure that Hunter would have never stopped making fun of him for it if he had indeed done that, so maybe not.

They didn’t choose the same college, but they did about as good as they possibly could have, given that. Hunter had chosen to go to some school that Sebastian had never heard of (it was private, apparently, and gave him a scholarship, not that he _really_ needed it, and also it gave Sebastian heart palpitations to hear him say it, the completely unfamiliar name catching him off guard), which essentially he described as living quietly in the shadow of a much larger college, aka Sebastian’s choice. Their campuses were about half an hour’s driving apart.

It was perfect. They would be able to have a healthy amount of distance between them as they adapted to college life, but they were also close enough that they could see each other often and, potentially, get an apartment together that was roughly between their schools. And just like that, everything was good.

Except for the fact that Sebastian was nothing if not good at sabotaging himself at every opportunity.

As graduation grew closer, more and more people started asking about his and Hunter’s relationship.

_Okay, sure, Sebastian, you’re going to be in the same place, but that doesn’t actually mean anything. People change a lot in college, do you really want to be tied to him through that?_

_I looked up the school Hunter’s going to. About seventy percent girls. Looks like you’re going to have some competition for his attention._

_Half an hour is still a long way when you’ve been used to seeing each other practically all day every day._

_You both could turn into completely different people._

It didn’t get to him at first. He had enough faith in his and Hunter’s relationship to not be too worried just because of something that a couple of douchebags said. They didn’t know him, they didn’t know Hunter, they didn’t know their relationship. He pushed it out of his mind for the most part. He ignored how people were surprised to see them still together at get-togethers over the summer, some outright explaining that they had anticipated graduation being the cutoff point for their relationship.

He managed to, for the most part, let it slide off of his back, until Hunter’s father’s voice joined in to it.

The thing was, Mr. Clarington had never been a big fan of Sebastian, and he wasn’t really sure if it had more to do with him ‘bringing out’ the gay in his son, or the history that Sebastian had, or something else entirely, but whatever it was, he just didn’t approve. Hunter’s mother had always been great, and she loved Sebastian as if he was her own son as well, but that didn’t make up for everything, clearly.

Before they ever got together, Hunter had said something at some point about not being sure if he could be in a relationship with someone long term if his family didn’t approve.

Towards the beginning of their relationship, Hunter had said that he was sure his father would come around to liking Sebastian, and he just needed to get to know him a little bit better.

“I think we maybe should break up,” Sebastian said one afternoon as they laid together on a hammock in Hunter’s yard. His eyes were closed tightly as he said it, as if maybe all of this wouldn’t actually be real if he didn’t face it as he said it.

Hunter tried to sit up quickly, the action almost making both of them fall out of the hammock, which would have been funny if it wasn’t for the fact that the scenario was so very, very _not funny at all_ and if Hunter’s face wasn’t just immediately a mask of complete and utter pain. “What?”

“We should break up,” he repeated, and his voice cracked in the middle of it, his voice betraying the fact that he didn’t really want to do that.

“I heard you, but, I just… why? We should _not_ , actually,” he said, shaking his head quickly.

“Yes, we should,” he said. “We’re bound to grow apart anyways. We’re going to go off to college and we’re going to fall apart, so why not just go ahead and give it a clean break right now?”

“Because I don’t want that,” he said. “I don’t want a clean break. And I don’t think that you want that, either. Bastian, come on.”

“You don’t know that,” Sebastian said and shook his head firmly, suddenly finding it a lot harder to look at Hunter. “Everything is stacked against us anyways.”

“What? What are you talking about, what is stacked against us?” With each passing second, Hunter looked more and more distraught and it hurt to look at.

“Everything, Hunter,” he said, shaking his head and taking the opportunity to keep his gaze pointed straight out ahead of him. “I mean, god. You can’t pretend to not have heard what everyone is saying.”

“Nobody knows anything and it’s none of their business,” he said, his hands darting out to grab onto Sebastian’s. “I don’t let it bother me because I know better.”

“Okay, fine, what about words out of your own mouth?”

Hunter furrowed his brow, shaking his head slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“You said that you couldn’t be with someone your family doesn’t approve of,” he said, and when he tried to pull his hands away, Hunter only gripped them tighter, like he had let his grip go slack in a game of tug of war for a second and he desperately needed to regain it. “Newsflash, Hunt, your dad hates me.”

“I said that a long time ago,” he protested, shaking his head firmly. “God, were we even together when I said that? Things change, Sebastian.”

“Or you are just saying that because you’ve convinced yourself that you don’t care when you do, or you’re still holding out hope that he’s going to change his mind about me. Not going to happen.”

“I don’t care about that, Sebastian, you know I don’t,” he said.

“Okay, so, sure, maybe it won’t be the dad’s disapproval thing that’ll do it. Maybe it’ll just be the pressures of staying in a relationship when we’re in an entirely new situation,” he said.

“But that’s exactly why we should stay together,” Hunter protected, shaking his head quickly. “If everything is going to be changing, I need you to be a constant for me.”

“You’ll find some other person to rely on,” he said, shrugging.

“Sebastian, will you please listen to me? That is not what I want. Not at all, not even a little bit.”

“We’ve only been together for, like, a year. That’s barely any time at all.”

“It’s way more than a year, and even if it wasn’t, that’s a _huge_ amount of time when you’re in high school, especially when neither of us has really had relationships of any significant length before now.”

“Okay, sure, it feels like a long time now, but in the grand scheme of things, it will just be… a fond memory. Nobody actually stays together with their high school sweetheart forever,” he said.

“Some people do. I don’t want you to just be a fond memory.”

This argument went on for another hour. The sad thing about the situation was that in the what was actually nearly two years that they had been together, they had never really had many fights. Their first real fight came over whether or not they should break up. Ultimately, Hunter was able to talk him down, something that Sebastian would be incredibly grateful for in the years to come.

When all was said and done, the two of them ended up curled up on the ground in the Claringtons’ backyard, Hunter’s arms wrapped tight around Sebastian like he was concerned that he was going to disappear into thin air if he didn’t keep a tight hold on him.

It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t make all of the doubt go away, and it didn’t make everything perfect. But it made things better, and they didn’t break up, and that was all that really mattered.

* * *

 

_now._

Sebastian didn’t know how he was going to go about this. Now that he had a more full picture of what had gone wrong, he felt like he should’ve been able to develop a plan and get it in action so that he could just get back to being with Hunter and put all of this behind him. But he didn’t. He just didn’t.

The first thing he did was go to Nick and Jeff, because apparently that’s where his life was these days. After he explained to them what Hunter had told him, there was a long silence that stretched out between them.

Eventually, Jeff spoke up. “I think that’s sadder than anything I had ever come up with.”

“But it’s also better than anything else, right?” Sebastian asked. “I mean, not from a, like, at the time standpoint or anything. It’s a shitty way for things to end, there’s no way around that. But for my purposes now.”

“Maybe,” Nick said with a small shrug. He paused for a moment, looking a little bit pained, like he didn’t really want to say whatever he was about to though he knew that he needed to. “Yes, you don’t have to get him to forgive you for something you did or anything like that, but well… You both made the decision to give up, and… Hunter’s still stubborn. That hasn’t changed.”

“But isn’t it also just kind of a fact that I’m a persuasive asshole and nobody’s seen more of that than him?”

Nick let out a soft laugh at that, shrugging. “Alright, you may have a point there,” he said. “But still, just… It isn’t going to be easy. From what you said, it sounds like he was pretty convinced that it was completely over.”

“But that’s the thing. He was _saying_ that, but he seemed to be having trouble with it,” he said.

“Mhm. To be fair, I kind of suspect that anyone would have some trouble with their convictions when their ex shows back up pretty much pledging his love for them,” Jeff said.

“I didn’t pledge my love for him,” he said, shaking his head. “I just talked to him.”

Jeff chuckled softly, nodding. “Alright, sure, sure. But still, you’ve been kind of a lovesick puppy and I’m sure it came across. You probably had hearts in your eyes that whole time. Which I love, I really do. Just, you know, maybe you’re hitting his weak spot.”

“Sebastian _is_ Hunter’s weak spot, just generally speaking,” Nick said with a laugh, shaking his head.

“Okay, you’re right,” he said. “But like, extra weak. Assuming, I guess, that Hunter still is in love with him, and misses him at least in some capacity.”

“I can’t say for sure, but that feels like a pretty safe bet.”

Sebastian nodded. “I know I must sound pretty biased, but I think so,” he said. “He outright said we _both_ need to move on. Implying that he hasn’t.”

“Okay, so maybe you’re in a good spot,” Jeff said with a grin. “Hunter still loves you, he misses you, and you’re in a place where you’re more willing to talk to him about it than you were before you lost your memories.”

“Exactly,” Sebastian said with a nod. “Circumstances are different now, and maybe this is just the push we needed to get us to actually do something.”

“It could be,” Nick said, nodding slowly, the look on his face displaying a slightly upsetting amount of concern. “Just… be careful, alright? Just because you feel differently and your memories are gone, that doesn’t mean Hunter is there, too. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“When did you get so wise?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

Nick let out a soft laugh at that, shaking his head. “I’m not. I’m just good at pretending.”

“Alright, that’s fair,” he said, leaning back against the couch cushions.

From there the conversation devolved into something much less serious, which helped. For a moment they lingered on teasing Sebastian about how he was being so very ‘schoolgirl with a crush’ about this, and how cute it was, but eventually they started talking about just about anything that came up naturally. Lately, it had almost felt like everything in his world was revolving around either his memory loss or his intentions to get back to Hunter, and just sitting around with his friends, laughing about everything and nothing, felt good.

* * *

 

There had been some amount of discussion about tactics, but the fact of the matter was this: Sebastian was not a planner. He was always one to wing things and hope for the best even in situations where he absolutely should not wing it (and it drove Hunter _nuts_ , which just made him laugh and only served to reinforce the behavior).

So his next step was to, for lack of a better term, stalk Hunter. And really, that sounded so much worse than it actually was. He just happened to have found his workplace pretty easily, and from there he was able to pretty quickly find the coffee shop that he was most likely going to based on its location between his apartment and work.

Which yes, still did sound relatively bad, but it was all in the name of righting wrongs, and in some cases the ends justify the means. Hunter would thank him eventually.

For a couple of mornings, Sebastian found himself sitting in the café with a newspaper in front of him, entirely neglected as he sat and watched out the window as his coffee grew cold. Each time there was a movement outside the door he would snap back to attention, only to roll his eyes at himself when it was someone who looked nothing like Hunter at all.

He probably would have given up after the third day (the coffee was good and the atmosphere was nice, sure, but sitting around there was a waste of time if it didn’t turn into him seeing Hunter again) if it wasn’t for the barista coming up to him and talking to him.

“So… who’re you waiting on?” she asked, leaning against the counter and raising an eyebrow at him.

“What?” he asked, turning to look at her, not really having expected to be approached just then.

“You’ve been in here every day this week and you’re watching that door like crazy. You’ve got to be waiting on someone,” she said. Chuckling, she said, “Someone who apparently has stood you up a few days in a row. That’s dedication.”

“It’s not…” he said, starting and stopping after a moment with a sigh. “It’s not a date. And for all I know the person I’m looking for isn’t going to ever be here, but…” He didn’t want to explain it to her. He didn’t want to tell her that he had gotten up ridiculously early and was sitting here in some vain hope that his ex-boyfriend who he hadn’t really talked to in a year might come through the door, because this coffee shop was the only one that should’ve been on his route to work and Sebastian _knew_ how worthless Hunter was in the morning before he had coffee in him. “I just wanted to come here, just in case.”

“So who is it?” she asked.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

The girl gestured around the room. Aside from the two of them and the other man working behind the counter, the store was empty aside from an elderly man in the corner with a book in his hands. “I think I can take a moment,” she said. “And you’re interesting. I love it. _So_ , tell me about her or him.”

“Fine, fine,” he said, rolling his eyes though he didn’t actually feel as annoyed by her insistence as he might’ve been. He paused for a moment, trying to figure out the most vague way to explain it. “It’s my ex-boyfriend. I want to talk to him, but I know he’d avoid it. I think he might come here.”

She looked confused, but if she wanted to press for more background, she held herself back. “Okay, well, maybe I can help there,” she said. “I work most mornings, so if he comes around often enough I might be able to place him if you describe him.”

“Okay…” he said with a small nod, taking a moment to try to figure out how to best explain Hunter so that she might recognize him. “His name is Hunter. He’s got, like… brownish blondish hair, and it’s a little shorter than mine. He usually has it like…” he paused for a moment, gesturing with his hands to indicate how Hunter styled his hair. “He’s a pretty solid guy. But not in a fat way, I mean, like, he’s strong as hell and you can tell it just by looking at him. He never comes off as looking like he’d be nice, especially not in the mornings, but he is.”

“Okay, you’re awful at this,” she said, shaking her head. “But I think I know who you’re talking about.”

“Yeah?” he asked, suddenly feeling much more hopeful.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Comes in here a little bit after opening most mornings, looks like a jerk and is pretty picky about how his coffee is made, but he tips really well. Always pays in cash.”

“That sounds like him,” he said with a nod, unable to help himself but to chuckle softly at her words, because of fucking course Hunter was like that. He was always the one who insisted on tipping well at restaurants and being polite even if the food and service wasn’t great. He was the person who always made sure to bring his cart back to the return or to the front of the store when they bought groceries.

(He was also the paranoid sort of person who didn’t like to use his card in too many places especially where he felt his information “might not be secure” so he insisted on carrying a lot of cash for situations like buying coffee or food on the go, but that was neither here nor there.)

“Yeah, sometimes he just doesn’t come in for a few days. But yeah, you’ve come to the right place, he’s in here all the time.”

That conversation helped. It told him that if he just waited, eventually Hunter had to show up, and he didn’t need to know that their meeting wasn’t just a pure coincidence. So he kept coming back and drinking coffee and making light conversation with the baristas.

And then, finally, he was there.

He walked in after several days of Sebastian drinking too much coffee much too slowly, and it felt like a fucking miracle. He walked in and placed his order, only noticing that Sebastian was there once he went to go stand and wait for his coffee to come out. He raised an eyebrow as he looked over at him, mumbling, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Fancy seeing you here,” he said with a grin. “Good morning, Hunter.”

“Sebastian, please,” he said, and Sebastian liked to think that the bigger part of the reason that he sounded so exhausted was just because he was, in fact, tired since it was the early morning.

“Please what?”

Hunter seemed to struggle with his words for a moment, shaking his head slightly. His coffee was put on the counter and he grabbed it before going over and sitting down across the table from Sebastian. “So you’re doing this again?”

“Again?” he asked. “And what, exactly?”

There was a pause where it seemed that Hunter had to remind himself that Sebastian’s memories were not all there. “You… this is probably worse, now,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “How did you even know I come here? On second thought, don’t answer that. You’re terrifying and you have your ways.”

“So, when did I do something like this before?” he pressed.

“Like… I guess twoish years ago? Maybe a bit more. I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “We had had a fight and I was staying with a friend for a bit—”

“That doesn’t sound like something that would help.”

“…Maybe so, and trust me, you told me so at the time,” he said. “But the point is that it happened. And yeah, maybe I was a dick about it and ignored all your texts and calls.”

“Huh, yeah. That does sound like a dick move,” he said.

Hunter paused for a moment, raising an eyebrow at him. “Not helping, Sebastian.”

“Right, right, my bad. Go on,” he said.

“Anyways, I wasn’t really talking to you, and you just… You started showing up places where you knew I’d be,” he said. “Or you’d send flowers just to send a note with them, that sort of thing, to make sure I couldn’t ignore you.”

“When you put it like that, it actually sounds pretty sweet,” he pointed out.

Hunted sighed and paused for a moment, nodding. “Alright, yeah, it was,” he said. “But that was entirely different from now. Now, it’s…” he paused for a second, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

“But hey, at least I’m consistent,” he said with a grin.

“That you are,” he said with a small nod. “I’m not sure it’s a good thing, though.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said with a laugh.

Hunter laughed as well, seemingly in spite of himself. “You know, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by how… self-assured you are, but I always am.”

“It’s charming, isn’t it?” he asked with a grin.

“I suppose some people might say so.”

“And you’re one of those people,” Sebastian said with a grin.

“Maybe,” he said. He took a sip of his coffee, tapping on the home button on his phone. “You’re not the best at thinking things through, though. There’s a flaw in your plan.”

“Oh?” he asked, furrowing his brow.

Hunter nodded, gesturing to his phone. “You caught me on my morning commute. I don’t have time to sit around and chat.”

“Does that mean that, if you did have time, you _would_ stick around to chat with me?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re a goddamn broken record, Clarington,” he said, shaking his head.

“Maybe I am,” he said with a laugh.

“I hate you so much,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” he said.

The teasing was so easy and familiar that it would’ve been too easy to let themselves get caught in it, but they both seemed to remember themselves at about the exact same moment.

Hunter cleared his throat and picked up his coffee, pushing his chair back so that he could stand. “Anyways, I should get going,” he said.

“Right,” Sebastian said, nodding slightly. There were a million things that he had wanted to say, but in that moment he couldn’t get a single one of them to come out. “Yeah.”

“See you,” he said.

“See you,” he said back, and like that, Hunter was gone again.

He tried not to think of it as a failure. They had talked, and it hadn’t been incredibly awkward. Hunter had almost admitted that he was charming. It was something.

A few hours later, his phone went off:

_It was kind of nice seeing you today._

It was from Hunter. At some point following the breakup he had deleted Hunter’s number from his phone, but he had been able to convince Jeff to put it back into his phone for him, because damned if he was going to go back to square one and hit on Hunter to get his phone number (which yes, he most certainly would have to do. He was nothing if not a flirt).

He stared at it for a long moment before being able to form words to send back. He couldn’t believe that _Hunter_ had initiated contact between them.

_[Sebastian]: It was nice to see you, too. Any chance you’d like to see me again, intentionally?_

_[Hunter]: Maybe._

_[Sebastian]: Not this again._

_[Sebastian]: Coffee sometime?_

_[Hunter]: No._

_[Sebastian]: Okay… so what?_

_[Hunter]: I don’t know. Nothing too much like a date._

_[Sebastian]: Dating me wouldn’t be the worst thing._

_[Hunter]: Don’t._

_[Sebastian]: Okay, fine. How about we do some sort of group get together or something? We’re not alone, it’s not a date._

_[Hunter]: That’ll work. Tell me the time and place, and I’ll be there._

_[Sebastian]: Will do._

Hunter didn’t text him back, but he didn’t need him to. This was already better than he could have hoped for, especially given how he was pushing him a little bit. Maybe this was going to be easier than he thought. Maybe all it would take was spending a little bit of time together and they’d fall back together.

He didn’t want to count on it, but god was he ready to go back to quiet nights curled up against Hunter, doing nothing of any importance. It was hard to think about it taking longer than that. Soon, he told himself. Soon.


	6. Six

_then._

Sebastian was going to vomit. Or, well, no, he wasn’t. Hopefully. And if anyone were to ask, he wasn’t even nervous, because 1) Sebastian Smythe didn’t _do_ nervous and 2) Sebastian Smythe _definitely_ didn’t get nervous about a date, especially not with someone he had already been friends with for a while now.

The thing was this, though: he had never really been in a relationship, and a couple of dates that never really went anywhere as well as a fair amount of one night stands was about all that he had going for him, which in all honesty didn’t feel like it amounted to much in this situation. And in the past, everyone that he had dated or slept with had met both of two criteria: 1) they were gay or bi and totally aware and accepting of that fact long before Sebastian knew or at least got involved with them and 2) they were relative strangers to Sebastian.

Hunter was neither of those things. Hunter was one of Sebastian’s best friends (arguably his best friend, but Sebastian didn’t really spend too much time worrying about the particulars of that sort of thing), and he was just getting his footing on what exactly his sexuality was.

It would have added up to the whole situation just flat out being a non-starter if it wasn’t for the simple fact that this was Hunter Clarington, and somehow ever since showing up in Sebastian’s life, Hunter had been nothing if not a game changer. So when he had stopped Sebastian mid-sentence as they sat around after a Warbler rehearsal – pretending to get work done but instead mostly goofing around –  and told him that he was pretty sure he had feelings for him and he wanted to take him on a date, Sebastian’s first response after making him clarify so he didn’t make an ass of himself was a clear and resounding _yes_.

At first it hadn’t really been that bad, thinking about it. After all, they had spent plenty of time together since Hunter had come to Dalton, and being on a date probably wouldn’t be that much different, right? Of course, as the date grew closer and he thought about it more, the more concerned he was with it. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but when he was all by himself there was no real point in denying it; he was a bit of a fucking wreck about the whole thing.

“It’s really cute that you’re worried about it like this,” Nick had commented.

“I’m not worried about it.”

“Except for how you are. And like I said, it’s cute. I never would’ve expected it for you, but it makes sense. You’ve got it bad for him.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. This whole grumpy denial thing isn’t changing any of what I said,” he said. “Listen, just relax, it’ll be fine. Even if it doesn’t go well and it doesn’t work out, I’m one hundred percent positive that you’ll stay friends.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, deciding that that response was detached enough that it didn’t necessarily mean admitting to anything.

Nick shrugged. “I’ve just got a good feeling about it. And besides, you’ve got a whole year and a half left at Dalton, so if you break up, you’ll have to stay friends or else it’ll be awkward for everyone.”

“One of us could probably end up just quitting singing,” he pointed out.

“We wouldn’t allow that,” he said brightly.

Sebastian rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “Right, of course not,” he said. “Listen, if you’re going to be lingering around like this, at least make yourself useful. Help me pick out what I’m wearing.”

“Sure,” he said. “Well, for starters, what vibe are you going for? Is the idea to seduce Hunter on the first date?”

“I said be helpful, not be an ass.”

**

All of the worrying led to this moment: sitting in the passenger seat of Hunter’s car on the way to a restaurant a couple towns over, somewhere that was far enough away from the norm that it felt like it was something special rather than just being another evening they just happened to go out to get something to eat together.

It had started out promising. Hunter had picked Sebastian up and he had told him that he looked nice and they made fun of how “typical first date” the moment had felt, and it seemed like maybe everything was going to be fine and Sebastian had been overthinking it all. They _were_ friends after all, and everyone said friendship was a good foundation for a relationship.

But once they got into the car and started driving, an awkward silence fell over them, and neither one said a word for most of the half hour drive except for Hunter saying that Sebastian could change the radio station if he wanted to.

The awkwardness continued into when they got to the restaurant and were seated. Most of the evening went something along these lines:

“So, ah… How’d you do on that last test in history?”

“Eh, not too bad.”

“Yeah… same. It was alright.”

Any attempt at conversation quickly fell flat and they returned to silence until one of them came up with something new to talk about, and even though Sebastian desperately wanted to find something they could talk about that would revitalize their conversation and make the whole thing less uncomfortable, nothing worked.

Until the tail end of their meal as they were just waiting on the check, when a waiter walked by with a tray of full cups of waters and sodas, taking a corner too fast and ending up tilting the tray and having everything dump onto Hunter.

“Woah, what the fuck,” were the first words out of Sebastian’s mouth, loudly, because he had never been too good as holding himself back from saying things.

Hunter looked over towards Sebastian with wide eyes and for a moment he wasn’t sure which thing he was reacting to: the cold liquid and hard plastic cups that had just waterfalled over him, or Sebastian yelling fuck in public while there were fairly young children around.

The waiter was apologizing to him and awkwardly trying to gather up some of the cups and straws from around him, but for the moment Hunter seemed entirely incapable of forming words to say anything. In retrospect, Sebastian would insist that this was a good thing; Hunter was the type to brush things off and he surely would’ve said it was no big deal, which it most certainly was not.

“Alright, skippy, I’m going to bring this soaking wet rag into the bathroom to get him cleaned off, and when I get back I’m expecting to have a conversation with a manager,” Sebastian said with a smile before pulling Hunter to his feet and dragging him off to the bathroom.

They both started grabbing paper towels and wiping and patting Hunter dry as best they could, Sebastian eventually starting to get some of them wet to wipe his skin clean where it was sticky with whatever soda had landed on him.

“Thanks,” Hunter said after they were done, looking at Sebastian with a small smile.

“Yeah, no problem,” he said, chuckling softly. “You looked like you weren’t going to do anything, and I’ll be damned if I was going to just let you sit there covered in soda.”

“It was like an ice bucket challenge, of course I was going to be a little bit shocked by it,” he protested.

“No, I remember your ice bucket challenge, you took that like a champ,” Sebastian said, chuckling softly.

When all was said and done, they walked out of the restaurant having paid nothing for their meals for the “inconvenience,” because Sebastian was nothing if not capable of making things happen with his words.

“I’m a little mad that you did that,” Hunter commented as they settled into the car.

“What?” he asked, shifting to look over at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Is it really a date if I didn’t pay for the meal?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” he said with a laugh.

“Okay, sure, maybe it’s a date. But you can’t act like it was a good date,” he said.

Sebastian let out a long breath, shaking his head slightly. “Why don’t we go and stop somewhere and get some ice cream or something?”

“Ice cream?” he echoed, raising an eyebrow over at him.

“It’s just a thought,” he said. “It’ll help you retain some of your pride and pay for something on the date, and well… It would let us draw it out for a little bit longer.”

“You really want to draw this out?” Hunter asked him, sounding more than a little bit incredulous.

“Of course I do.”

He still looked dubious, but ice cream was ice cream, after all, and it wasn’t too hard to convince him that it was worth at least stopping briefly for.

Looking back, Hunter would be more grateful for Sebastian’s insistence that they didn’t just call it quits at that point than for practically anything else that had ever happened to him.

They stopped for ice cream sold out of a trailer on the side of the highway that Sebastian swore wasn’t as sketchy as it seemed, and they sat in the grass out back side by side as they ate. Hunter, with his sister’s voice in the back of his head chiming in that on a date you always wanted to eat foods that were neat and you were able to look cute while eating, elected for a simple cup of ice cream, whereas Sebastian had gotten just about the tallest and most precarious ice cream cone he had ever laid eyes on, and subsequently made a mess of himself.

Laughing as he dabbed a droplet of melted ice cream off of his chest with a wadded up napkin, Sebastian said, “Well, look. Now you’re not the only one who is going to be sticky as a result of this date.”

“... Knowing you, I am actually surprised that that’s not a dirty joke,” he said.

“This is our first date, I’m classier than that,” he said with a grin, laughing softly and shaking his head.

“I never would have guessed,” Hunter said with a fond roll of his eyes.

“You have no faith in me,” he protested, playfully pouting at him.

“No, I just know you and your utter lack of filter,” he said. “Also, you’ve got a little bit of ice cream on your lip.”

“Of course I do,” he said with a soft laugh, bringing the napkin up to wipe at his face.

“No, it’s…” he started and then trailed off, reaching out and taking the napkin away from him. He leaned forward, bringing his hand up to wipe his face clean.

Grinning up at him, Sebastian said, “You know, that was awfully cheesy of you. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was never even any ice cream on my lip at all.”

“No… I don’t think that it was that cheesy,” he said, clearly seeing an opportunity and knowing he was never the type to let that sort of thing slip between his fingers. “Not until I do this.” He was vaguely aware of Sebastian raising an eyebrow and looking like he was about to start to ask what exactly he meant by that but he didn’t give him time to do so. He leaned in, cupping his cheek with one hand as he kissed him softly.

When he pulled back, Sebastian looked up at him with a smirk. “Alright, there _definitely_ wasn’t any ice cream,” he said.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

That was probably the moment when Sebastian was screwed. There was no going back now, he had unofficially signed over his heart without fully realizing that he had done so.

* * *

_now._

Everything probably would have worked out perfectly fine if Sebastian had accounted for the fact that his friends were total and complete assholes.

He had decided that the right thing to do would be to go and have some sort of night out. Just going out to a bar and drinking had never been Hunter’s thing and he didn’t anticipate that that had changed in the past few years, and since this whole thing was really all about winning Hunter back, that was out. He spent plenty of time thinking about different possibilities for what he could gather up some friends to go do, but a lot of the things that came up just felt ridiculous, like something that they might have done in high school or earlier in college when they just needed to find something to do but they couldn’t get into a bar.

What he ended up deciding on was a nearby bar’s trivia night. He wasn’t sure that it wasn’t still an immature sort of thing, but drinking was an option while not being the focus, and after all, they had always been pretty competitive and it seemed like the right thing to do.

It had been easy getting Nick and Jeff to agree to come, and after some convincing, a couple of other people that he had been friends with in college had agreed to come along as well. He was sure that it would be a slightly weird blast from the past for them, but worse things had happened.

Except, well, when the time came, he arrived at the bar to find only Hunter and Jeff sitting there at the table.

“Hold on, I’m going to borrow Sebastian for a second,” Jeff said to Hunter with a grin, before walking with Sebastian out of earshot. “You’re welcome.”

“For what?” Sebastian asked, raising an eyebrow.

“For this!” he said, gesturing back in Hunter’s direction. “I’m about to head out, too, actually.”

“What are you saying?”

“What I’m saying, my dear Sebastian, is that me and Nick arranged for you and Hunter to have a lovely evening, just the two of you,” he said, grinning.

Sebastian groaned, rubbing his hand over his face. “He’s going to leave,” he said.

“No he won’t,” he interjected quickly.

“Yes, he will,” he said. “He made it very clear that he did not want to have anything that too closely resembled a date. He’s going to think that I orchestrated it so that it would end up being just us here tonight.”

“He’s not going to think that,” he said. “And besides, Nick is sick at home and couldn’t have come, and I need to get home to take care of him. That’s just true, and Hunter knows that.”

“And what about Kelly and Dima?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jeff laughed softly, shrugging. “We told them not to come.”

“You’re unbelievable,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “And being friends with you is exhausting.”

“Have a little faith, Sebastian,” he said. “If the two of you are meant to be like you’re so sure that you are, then don’t you think that he’d want to spend some time with you, too?”

“I.. I mean, yes, but—”

“Then stop stressing about it and just accept that if he was going to leave, he would’ve done it by now,” he said. “He knows you’re the only one who is going to be here.” He grabbed Sebastian by the shoulders, turning him around and nudging him in the right direction.

Sebastian sighed softly and looked back at him with a roll of his eyes, before heading off to go back to the table. As much as he hated to admit it, Jeff was right, and he was likely overreacting. Hunter _hadn’t_ left.

He sat down with Hunter at the table, giving him a quick smile. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he said with a small nod, taking a sip of his beer. Knowing Hunter, that beer would last him the entire evening, even though it would get to be unpleasantly warm by the end of the night.

“So… Sorry about everyone bailing,” he said.

“It’s alright,” Hunter said with a small shrug. He reached out towards another glass on the table, pushing it towards him. “That’s for you.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said, picking up the glass and taking a sip of it. Furrowing his brow, he asked, “What is that?”

“Some drink you made up a couple years ago. I honestly don’t remember what you called it,” he said with a shrug, shaking his head.

“Ah. Well, it’s good. Thanks,” he said.

“No problem.”

Sebastian was pretty sure he was going to explode. Here he was, sitting with Hunter in a bar, with Hunter having gotten him a drink that he must have ordered from memory (and that he needed to get the recipe for from him, because shit, it was good) and somehow the man who had been acting like interacting with him would be the worst thing that could happen was suddenly being so casual and it felt so fucking right and it was _so close_ to being right while not quite hitting the mark.

“Sorry about… this,” he said, gesturing around the table to indicate the lack of others with them. He regretted bringing it up just about as soon as the words had left his mouth, because suddenly there was a bit more tension in Hunter’s shoulders again.

“It’s alright,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t have expected anything else to happen.”

“Yeah… I genuinely didn’t intend for that to happen,” he said.

“No, yeah, I know. It’s cool,” he said, looking down at the table and fiddling with the napkin that his beer had been sitting on. “I kind of saw this coming when Dima texted me this morning something about something coming up with her boyfriend.”

“Right,” he said, nodding slightly.

“Since it seems like if Dima wasn’t going to come, then Kelly certainly wouldn’t,” he said.

“Yeah. That’s true,” he said, letting out a soft chuckle not because of any humor in the situation but mostly out of some sort of obligation to try and make the conversation feel a little bit less stilted and uncomfortable. “Honestly, I’m not sure if Nick is even sick.”

“He probably isn’t,” Hunter agreed, looking over at him with a small smile.

“And either way, we probably didn’t want it to just be the four of us anyway,” he said. “That would’ve been too much like a double date.”

“We have been on way too many of those with them,” he said, shaking his head. “And every time, it was exhausting.”

Sebastian chuckled softly and nodded, trying not to think too much about the fact that Hunter had used the same word to describe the pair that he had just used when talking to Jeff. He already knew they were of the same mind about plenty of things.

They made a little bit of small talk while they waited for the trivia game to start, the tension in the air between them seeming to dissipate a bit. It still wasn’t as good or as right as it could have been, but it was better than it could have been. After all, Hunter was still there. He hadn’t left.

Once the game started, a few things came back to his mind. While their group of friends had always been competitive (making Mario Party and Mario Kart potentially physically dangerous pastimes), Hunter and Sebastian were the _most_ competitive. And god, were they a good team when they united to overcome a shared opponent. By the time there was an intermission in the game, they had pulled away from the competition.

The thing was this, of course: they both liked to know things. They liked to learn a little bit about everything, though they had different areas of interest (for example, Hunter was a huge fucking nerd for American history), which made them a fairly unstoppable team.

When a pop culture question came up that had to do with something that had happened the year prior, Hunter had taken advantage of the opportunity to poke a bit of fun at Sebastian’s expense for having lost his memory. While he had fulfilled his obligation of acting annoyed by it, it was a refreshing change from how everyone else had treated the topic of his amnesia.

(And it worked out well for them as well when a question came up about something that was about five years back, the details having faded from Hunter’s mind while still being fairly fresh to Sebastian.)

It was fun. It was easy.

At the end of the night, light and giddy from the thrill of winning the competition and a little bit of alcohol and just generally having been around each other (at least for Sebastian, for whom Hunter had always been an energizing force, though he liked to think that Hunter felt the same), they wandered out into the parking lot together.

“Tonight was nice,” he said with a quick grin as he looked over at Hunter.

“Yeah, it was,” he said.

Sebastian grinned, leaning back against the side of Hunter’s car, wanting to prolong the moment there before he had to part ways with him, to go over to his own car and drive back to his own quiet apartment. It felt familiar and nice, like they were back in their first year of college, trying to hold off on saying goodnight after a date. “I wouldn’t mind doing something like this again,” he said.

“Yeah, I suppose that that’s possible,” he said, taking a small step forward towards him. “Though I’m not sure that they would like to have us back. We kind of embarrassed everyone else there.”

“That just provides them motivation to get better,” he said with a grin.

Hunter nodded slightly, chuckling. “Alright, yeah, I feel like that’s a fair point,” he said. “They should really welcome us back there.”

“They really should,” he said, humming.

They just looked at each other for a moment, both of them standing close to each other beside Hunter’s car. In hindsight neither of them would be sure which one leaned in first (though Sebastian would swear that it had been Hunter, though if pressed he might admit that it was partially him _hoping_ it had been Hunter), but either way they found their lips meeting in a soft kiss.

Sebastian was halfway through winding his arms around Hunter’s hips when the other man suddenly pulled back.

“No,” Hunter said, shaking his head. “This isn’t happening.”

“Yeah, it is,” he said quickly, moving forward into his space again and reaching up, placing a hand on his shoulder. “And it’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “It’s definitely not.”

“You’re being paranoid,” he said. “Everything is totally fine here, and will continue to be fine. Just kiss me and stop worrying.”

Hunter shook his head, taking another step away from him. “One of us has to be realistic, and in this case it has to be me,” he said. “It’s… It’s not fun, but you’ll thank me for it someday.”

“I wouldn’t be too convinced of that,” he said.

“You don’t remember it, I do,” he said. “Neither of us wants to go back down that road again.”

“What if it _doesn’t_ go back down that road?” Sebastian asked quickly. “You have no idea what will happen. How does that saying go? Past performance does not guarantee future results?”

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know that I don’t want to face that risk again, I just can’t deal with it.”

“So, what, you’re just not going to date anyone ever again? This same thing could happen with someone else, you know that, right?”

“I know,” he said. “And I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”

“So is what you’re saying that I’m not worth it?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Hunter stopped short for a second, shaking his head slightly. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m just trying to understand here, Hunt,” he said.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I will, because I know you like it. Like you like me, like you want to be with me,” he said. “You’re just not _letting_ yourself. How close am I?”

“Sebastian, stop.”

“No,” he said, reaching out for him again. Hunter pulled back like he had been burned. “Come on. Maybe this is happening for a reason. You’re the romantic, you’re the one that believes in fate.”

“A lot has happened, Sebastian, you can’t just undo it because you don’t remember it,” he said, shaking his head.

“Hunt, please,” he said. “Can’t we just… one night? Spend one night together, don’t think about what it means, just be us again?”

“We can’t do that,” he protested, shaking his head. “That would just make this worse.”

“You don’t know that,” he said.

“You keep saying that,” Hunter said, shaking his head.

“Because it’s true,” he said, trying to take his hands. “There is no guarantee of what happens next, but I’ve got a good feeling about it.”

Hunter just took in a long breath, squeezing his hands before letting them go and stepping back. “No matter what, we can’t just jump straight into this,” he said. “That won’t work. I especially don’t want that until you remember everything again. I don’t want anything to happen.”

“Okay,” he said. “We can do that. Nothing happens.”

“Good,” he said, sighing as he looked at him. “Nothing happens.”

And as disappointing as that felt, it was still progress.


	7. Seven

_then._

It was the first nice day of spring, and for the first time since Hunter and Sebastian had lived together, no one was there to complain about Sebastian leaving the windows open.

It was a special kind of hell.

It also felt strange, because just a week before, outside there had been what he might’ve called a blizzard if he hadn’t had Hunter’s voice in his head making fun of him for it, pouring several inches of snow over campus. He had been taught in high school that in literature, the weather often reflected the mood of the protagonist, which was why it so often happened that it rained when the main character was feeling down.

He hadn’t seen Hunter since before the storm even came.

He wondered what exactly snow meant in a literature analysis, and what the hell did it mean that only a handful of days passed and the temperature had jumped somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty degrees and the snow was suddenly melting rapidly, making the ground a muddy mess that thwarted the efforts of anyone that wanted to take advantage of the pleasant weather.

Of course, he didn’t need the weather to tell him he was feeling like shit.

“Alright, I’ve enough of this. Stop the moping.”

No, he had Paige Clarington to do that for him.

“I’m not moping,” he protested.

“Yeah, you know, you keep trying to tell me that, but I have eyes, and I know that you’re moping,” the girl protested. She nudged him from where he was laying on his couch, making him seriously regret that he and Hunter had ever decided to give the girl the spare key to their apartment when she moved to the area.

Paige was Hunter’s older sister, and by all rights she absolutely should have taken Hunter’s side and Sebastian probably shouldn’t have really seen her when he and Hunter weren’t talking. But she clearly didn’t care much for the idea that in situations such as this you were meant to take sides.

“You don’t see me a whole lot,” he countered.

“Don’t have to,” she said. “You’re moping, Hunter’s moping, and it’s idiotic.”

“It isn’t,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and started to head deeper into the apartment towards his bedroom. “It is,” she said. “And it’s especially idiotic that both of you are refusing to actually talk about why you broke up.”

“Okay, first, we didn’t break up. And two, even if we had, I wouldn’t be telling you about it, because it’s nobody else’s business,” he countered, getting up to follow after her and see what it was she was doing.

“No, Hunter made it my business when he came and crashed on my couch,” she said, shaking her head. “Which I don’t mind, granted, but it’s only common decency that if you’re going to welcome yourself into someone else’s home, even if you are family, you give them the juicy deets of why you’re there.”

“There aren’t juicy deets, and please don’t use that phrase again,” he said, shaking his head. “And anyways, that’s not my problem.”

“Don’t care. I’m making it your problem now,” she said with a shrug. “Because I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I don’t think that you should still be apart.”

“You don’t have all of the details,” he pointed out. “And again, not broken up or anything.”

“I don’t need to have all the details,” she said. “So unless one of you murdered someone or something – actually, scratch that, if one of you had murdered someone, you _absolutely_ would have dragged the other into it. At any rate, you torture yourselves by avoiding each other. There is no reason for it.”

“There is reason, actually. Reason that is, again, none of your business,” he said. He frowned as she went to his closet, starting to look through his clothing. “What are you doing?”

“You’re going to go out and have some drinks with me,” she said. “So you need to be dressed appropriately.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Paige turned back to him, a look on her face that reminded him that he was looking at Hunter’s sister. He had seen an almost eerily similar look on Hunter’s face, and whenever he saw it he knew that he had said something that Hunter found dumb enough that he didn’t feel the need to respond with words. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have stung the way that it did just then.

“Alright, fine, fine,” he mumbled.

She pulled together an outfit that she deemed appropriate (nothing that he ever would have worn for a night out, but what did he know?) and he begrudgingly put the clothes on, finding himself out at the bar an hour later.

Paige kept disappearing and returning, but she had always been her own brand of flaky that made him not worry too much about where it was that she was going. Any time that she was gone, after all, was time that he didn’t have to worry about having to make conversation with her.

After he was a couple of drinks in, he finally found out why it was that she had kept disappearing, and it occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

She walked back over to him, her hands on the shoulders of none other than Hunter himself, leading him over to the table where Sebastian was sitting.

Hunter seemed to notice him at about the same time that he noticed Hunter, and for a moment they just stared at each other. It made him ache.

*

_It had started with an innocent question._

_“Where do you see us, in the future?”_

_Sebastian looked up from the textbook he was halfheartedly trying to make himself read, finding Hunter looking at him. “Physically, or more… metaphorically?” he asked. “And how far into the future?”_

_“Well, both, I guess,” Hunter said with a shrug. “I mean, if we end up moving somewhere together, that does kind of indicate that we’re planning on, well, being together. Long term.”_

_“True. But I think we’re already kind of in that long term zone,” he pointed out with a soft laugh. “We’re like… four years deep now.”_

_“It’s more like five. Actually, more than five.”_

_Sebastian closed the textbook and took off his glasses, able to tell that this was about to become A Discussion. “That just proves me point more. Five years is a long time to be together.”_

_“And yet you didn’t even remember that it’s been five years,” he pointed out._

_“I remember our anniversary every year, I think that’s more important,” he said with a shrug. “It’s not like I_ don’t _know that it’s been five years.”_

_Hunter opened his mouth and then closed it again, seeming to realize that he was about to be picking a fight that was nowhere near worth it. “Right,” he said. “You didn’t answer the question, though.”_

_“Um… honestly, I don’t really know where I see us,” he said with a shrug, which was apparently not the right answer._

_“You… don’t know?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at him._

_“Well, no,” he said, shrugging. “I mean, there are just… a lot of things that we need to account for. I mean, most people have enough to figure out before graduation, without adding on thinking about their significant other.”_

_“Okay, but we’re not those people,” he said. “And if we’re serious about each other and being together, then we need to make each other a priority that is on our mind when we’re figuring out our next steps.”_

_“Which is all fine and good in theory, but what happens when one of us gets a great opportunity that we really want, but it would put us across the country from each other?” Sebastian asked, raising an eyebrow at him._

_“Then we would talk about it.”_

_“And what?” he said. He sighed, taking a moment before saying anything else, running his fingers through his hair. “Here’s the thing, Hunter. I know you. I know you would give something like that up to follow me. But I also know you would regret it and fuck, Hunt, I don’t want to think about having to face that right now.”_

_“Then when do you want to face it?” he asked. “We have to talk about it sooner or later.”_

_“I don’t know, Hunter, just…”_

_“You don’t know anything right now, huh?”_

_“You clearly don’t know either, which is why you asked me about this to begin with,” he pointed out, shaking his head. “You’re asking now because we’re on the brink of graduating and I’m looking at law school and you’re looking at jobs and that means another great big crossroads type of thing and fuck, maybe you’re looking for an out.”_

_“I’m not looking for an out, I’m looking for a conversation.”_

_“What do you want me to say, Hunter?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “I can’t see the future. Obviously I want you to be a part of it.”_

_“Then why not just say that?” he said. “Say that you want to be with me, no matter where your life takes you.”_

_“I do, but you’re not listening. I’d rather have to break up with you than have you resent me, or vice versa.”_

_“We’re both adults, Sebastian, I think that we can be mature and handle things and be honest about our feelings.”_

_“After committing ourselves to somewhere just because it has the other?”_

_Hunter sighed, running his fingers through his hair. “Yes. Because that would be worth it to me. You will always be worth it to me.”_

_“And you’re worth it to me, too, but—”_

_“Then what’s the problem?”_

_Sebastian shook his head slightly, sighing. “Okay, yes. Everything has worked out for us so far, and we’re adults, so we should be capable of making good decisions,” he said. “But our priorities could change over time.”_

_“So, what, you want to break up?”_

_“I didn’t say that either,” he said quickly._

_“Then talk to me, tell me what it is that you see happening,” he said._

_“I don’t know.”_

_“Something, Sebastian, please,” he said. “Tell me you’re afraid to lose me.”_

_“Of course I am. I’m_ terrified _of losing you.”_

_“Then act like it,” he said, frowning._

_“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Hunter. I’m trying to be realistic,” he said._

_Hunter shook his head, standing up and starting to pace. It was at this point that Sebastian probably should have started saying things to calm Hunter and soothe whatever was going on in his head, but he couldn’t. “I’m being realistic, too,” he said. “I’m being realistic and thinking that if I want to be with you, long term, then I’m willing to fight for you.”_

_“Which can only take you so far,” he said. “It’s a good sentiment, but—”_

_“It’s more than just a sentiment, Sebastian,” he said. “It’s me, committing myself to you and to making sure that you will always be a part of my life.”_

_“Until you let great big opportunities pass you by because you wanted to be with me.”_

_Hunter took in a deep breath and let it back out. “Bas, you’re just…” he trailed off, making a frustrated noise and gesturing vaguely with his hands. He picked up his jacket from where it was sitting on the back of the couch, shrugging it on as he walked towards the door. “I’ll see you later.”_

*

“Alright,” she said. “Talk.”

She nudged Hunter towards Sebastian before walking away and leaving them to themselves.

“Ironically,” Sebastian started before he could stop himself, “you did not, in fact, fight for me. Unless this was your idea, but still. A little late.”

Part of him was expecting those words to piss Hunter off (he had never been good about stopping himself from poking the bear, even when he knew exactly what he was doing. He just didn’t have the impulse control), but instead the other man let out a laugh. “Alright, you got me there.”

“I know,” he said. “I kept playing the conversation over and over in my head.”

“I did, too,” he said with a small nod.

They didn’t say anything for a moment, both of them just looking at the other.

Sebastian had had enough to drink that he was getting a bit distracted by how _pretty_ Hunter looked, and he tried to get his mind back on track.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. “I don’t…” he paused for a moment, trying to put the words together in his mind. “I would fight for you.”

Hunter looked down for a moment, nodding. “I know you would,” he said.

“I’m sorry that I made it sound like I wouldn’t,” he said. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t more… reassuring.”

“You’ve never been reassuring,” Hunter said with a small shrug, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have expected you to answer any differently.”

And that was that. It was entirely anticlimactic, because ultimately they knew that the whole thing had been unnecessary.

Hunter apologized and admitted that he had had a bad day that day and was basically just looking like a fight, so while it had been something that they needed to take about, it was more a matter of knowing that it would likely set Sebastian off. And in that regard, actually, he had underestimated Sebastian, because he had reacted more reasonably than he’d been counting on.

Sebastian gave him a smack for thinking that he was still the immature kid that he had been at the beginning of their relationship; they’d spent a lot of time establishing the fact that there was no lack of commitment on his part, and he’d appreciate Hunter not forgetting that. And of course, he would much rather Hunter talk to him when he was having a bad day rather than have him become part of the problem.

But it didn’t ruin the mood, and they ended up getting more drunk and making vague but sincere promises about their future together in between kisses.

Sebastian went to bed that night practically clinging to Hunter, citing that he needed more fierce cuddling in order to make up for the lost time.

* * *

 

_now._

It wasn’t all at once. Of course it wasn’t.

Part of Sebastian had thought that getting his memories back would be something like out of a movie, where he would be suddenly struck with a few years’ worth of memories all at once. But no, when it happened it was a fairly gradual thing, and he felt like some of his memories he had reacquired before even fully realizing that he had done so.

It had started with mostly vague things, like sensations more than anything else. He would watch certain things on television and a bad feeling came over him that he knew had something to do with something that had happened before. He would bite into a sandwich from somewhere he was told he enjoyed eating and it tasted wrong on his tongue.

Then there were glimpses of moments that he had been in before. Something somebody said or the inflection in their voice would send him back to a moment that he had been in before, but still in that hazy way where you just _know_ you have it in the tip of your tongue.

Most of these moments were insignificant. They were just little things that reminded him that he had, in fact, lived a full life for the past few years and no, not everything revolved around Hunter and the end of their relationship. While he didn’t particularly care too much about the memory of going to a food truck festival with Nick and Jeff, he supposed that it was a good sign. At very least, he could tell himself that that was a good thing in comparison to sitting on the couch watching old reruns and being filled with dread that had nothing to do with whatever drama was unfolding on the screen.

And then… there was Hunter.

He still didn’t get to see Hunter a whole lot, partially as a result of the other man’s busy schedule (and to a lesser extent his own) and partially because, well, it was strange. Hunter was very up front about the fact that it would take him a bit to get into the groove of being around Sebastian, if for no other reason than because it had been a while.

And, of course, the fact that he had lived through their breakup whereas Sebastian hadn’t, and he had repeatedly voiced his hesitance to pursue anything between them again. But Sebastian liked to forget about that part in favor of being more optimistic, a word he likely wouldn’t have used to describe himself before.

But still, being around Hunter was kind of the best part of his week whenever he _did_ get to see him. Say whatever you wanted, but he was still a lovestruck idiot at heart when it came to the other man, and he wasn’t particularly ashamed of it. Even moments where he was with Hunter and he got the impression of a bad memory, he was willing to push it aside in favor of a better present and future.

Even as the pieces fell into place more and more and he was able to place moments as they came back to him, he tried to ignore it. Everything would be fine.

Tonight, though, it was a little hard.

“So… I realized that you’re usually the one who stocked us with alcohol so my apartment’s kind of dry…” Hunter was saying as he walked into the living room, his brow furrowed as he looked down at a bottle in his hand.

The slightly troubled look on his face brought him back to a night they had spent together near the end. He had a feeling that it was a look that Hunter had worn a lot.

“Well, that’s alright. What’ve you got there?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s, ah, vodka. But not… good vodka,” he said.

“No?” he asked, letting out a soft laugh.

“It’s cake flavored. I mean, flavor’s not a bad thing, of course, but in this case it was,” he said. “I bought… a lot of it.”

Sebastian laughed softly, getting up from the couch to take the bottle from him and look down at it. “Why in god’s name would you do that?”

“For your birthday,” he said, chuckling. “About a year before we broke up. You joked about just taking your cake in liquid form – it made sense at the time – and I found that, so… Turns out, neither of us could stand it.”

“And yet you’d bought a bunch of it without knowing that,” he said, amused because that sounded exactly like Hunter. Go big or go home.

“I figured, it was a relatively low proof,” he said. “And we’d have friends around.”

“How much did we go through for my birthday?”

Hunter paused for a moment, just looking at him. He sighed, then said, “A couple of shots’ worth.”

“Christ,” he said with a soft laugh, shaking his head. “It’s that bad?”

“Try it for yourself,” he said, holding out the bottle.

Sebastian opened it and brought it to his lips, taking a sip from it. He swallowed, shaking his head. “Yeah, that’s not great,” he said.

“No, no it was not,” he said. “Hold on, I think I’ve got orange juice.”

“You… what?”

“Orange juice,” he repeated. “To go with the vodka. You know, like a screwdriver.”

“It’s _cake_ vodka,” Sebastian protested, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Somehow it actually tastes more like cake when it’s mixed with the orange juice,” he said.

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?”

Hunter grabbed two glasses and took the bottle back from Sebastian. He made them drinks with the cake vodka and orange juice, and they went into the living room.

As soon as the drink (“We called it the cakedriver”) hit his lips, Sebastian knew that he had tasted it before. He vaguely recalled them sitting around experimenting with what made the vodka most palatable.

He vaguely recalled it being a bright spot, one of few that they had had towards the end of their relationship.

They had needed alcohol to be around each other.

“Yeah,” he made himself say after a bit. “I suppose I can get behind this.”

“Mhm. When we were messing around with the cake vodka, this was deemed our best option,” Hunter said with a nod.

“What else did we try?” he asked.

“God, I don’t even remember now,” he said, chuckling. “We got… pretty messed up that night, honestly.”

Sebastian couldn’t help but wonder about some of what was said that night, and compare it to this night that he was living now. Neither he nor Hunter got drunk, but they both drank a bit, and Hunter became a bit more loose. He finally started telling him some stories about the blank space in Sebastian’s head; happier stories, all of them, from before things started to go downhill. Stories about when they had moved here, stories about dumb double dates they had gone on.

All the while, Sebastian couldn’t help himself but to be stuck on the feeling that the drink was bringing back to him. The tang of the orange juice tasted too bitter. The fake cake flavoring tasted like being tired, just moments away from giving up.

When he went to sleep that night, curled up on the couch because Hunter had insisted he was in no shape to be going anywhere (Hunter, free and happy with a bit of alcohol in him, had hesitantly said that the bed was big and it wasn’t like they hadn’t seen all of each other before, and it didn’t have to mean anything, but it had felt too much like pushing it), he couldn’t help but feel like he needed to take a step back.

It wasn’t going to be giving up on Hunter, but… Maybe just slowing down and thinking about it more. Maybe giving a little bit of stock to the fact that there was something to be said for Hunter’s theory that starting over was going to just set them down the same road as before.

He didn’t get much sleep that night, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the thoughts running through his head or the fact that he was sleeping somewhere that wasn’t home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know, i actually didn't intend for both parts of this to revolve around them drinking, and tbh when i realized that specific parallel i thought about changing it but, well, fuck it. i could put in some meta here about why the parallel actually does work accidentally but i don't want to ramble. so yeah xx


	8. Eight

_then._

Sebastian had never seen the appeal of cats. He supposed that if the question came down to whether he was a cat person or a dog person he might say that he was mostly ambivalent but he didn’t mind cats, but Hunter had grown up having one around and _he_ liked them, and if there was one thing that Sebastian knew he liked, it was seeing his boyfriend happy.

When they had set out to find a new place to live for their junior year of college, Hunter had commented on the lax pet policy of the management company that they had settled on. He hadn’t dwelled on it or brought it up again, but Sebastian knew that it would make him feel more at home if they had a cat around.

So he started going to the animal shelter. He had a couple of hours in between classes during which he would run off to the shelter to see the cats that they had there and spend a little bit of time with them. He wanted to be sure that he would get along with whatever cat he ended up getting, and he was torn between getting them a kitten and getting them an older cat.

“Hello again, Sebastian,” the girl behind the counter said with a smile as he came in. “Visiting the cats again?”

“Yeah,” he said with a nod, chuckling softly. He knew he had made this process more involved than most people did; most would go in, find a cat, adopt it, and get out, probably.

“We’ve got some new kittens in there today,” she said. “Maybe one of them will suit your fancy.”

“Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t know.”

“Well, let me know if you want me to get any of them out for you.”

“Thanks,” he said with a small nod, heading through the door and going down the hall to the cat room. Sure enough, in a wire cage in the corner, there were kittens, as promised.  Around the rest of the room, he saw a bunch of cats that he had seen before lounging around in their cages.

He knew that the shelter sometimes brought out new cats that had come in more recently or had just generally been being taken care of outside of where the general public could see them, and sometimes cats would be cycled in and out of the cat room or moved from cage to cage, so he always made sure to look around at all of the cats that were there just in case.

And that was how he met Tesla.

The cat was somewhere in between being an adult and a kitten, clearly still pretty young but with time left to grow. His proportions were akin to that of an awkward teenager, but he had bright eyes and he moved around his cage as if no one had told him shelter cats were meant to be lethargic.

When the cat noticed that he was being watched, he walked up to the glass separating them, looking at Sebastian with wide yellow-green eyes. He meowed until Sebastian came in closer, nosing at a hole in the glass.

“Okay, yeah, hi,” he said with a soft chuckle. The signs on the wall said not to pet the cats, but he had never been good at following rules, so he reached his fingers through the hole and pet the cats face. He started loudly purring, rubbing up against his fingers.

Even though Sebastian had intended to spend time checking out all of the cats there, including the kittens, something about this cat spoke to him and he knew that at very least he needed to get the girl to come back and let the cat out so he could hold him.

A few minutes later he had the cat curled up in his arms, purring and batting at his face.

“He’s got a lot of energy,” the girl said, chuckling. “But you’ve probably noticed that. He’ll probably mellow a bit as he gets older.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll mind too much either way,” he said, surprising himself with the honesty of it; he would have expected himself to want a more mellow cat, but he could very easily see himself spending plenty of time sitting around with the cat, just playing with him.

He spent a little bit more time just holding the cat and chatting with the girl, the cat being surprisingly patient with just being held. Finally, he decided to just pull the trigger, telling her to pull out the paperwork for adopting him.

As she was getting things started, Sebastian looked at the cat, smiling at him. “You’re coming with me, kid,” he told him. “You’ll be happy as a clam. Your dad’s going to love you.”

The girl looked up from where she was unfolding a cardboard box cat carrier, raising an eyebrow slightly.

“My boyfriend. He’s the one who is a cat person,” he explained, chuckling softly.

“Ah,” she said, nodding slightly. “Why haven’t you brought him along?”

“The cat’s kind of a surprise for him,” he said, shrugging. “Figured it would make him happy.”

“That’s cute,” she said. “Well, good luck. Adopting a pet together is a lot of responsibility, that’s impressive.”

It struck him then that this was kind of a big step in their relationship; sure, moving in together was kind of a big deal and they’d crossed that bridge a while back, but a lease ends at the end of a year. Getting a cat, a young cat no less, was an indicator that he wanted to stick with Hunter for years to come, unless they wanted to deal with cat custody issues.

The realization that getting Hunter a cat was committing him to years upon years with him didn’t make Sebastian flinch, and it was a good moment.

“Yeah, I mean, I figure it’s kind of about time. He’s wanted a cat for a while, he just never said anything,” he said with a shrug.

He allowed the girl to put the cat into the box so that he could finish up doing the paperwork and paying the adoption fee, and like that he was out the door. Having meowed in protest the entire time that he was in the box, Tesla was quickly freed, and after a quick trip to the pet store where he caught the attention of every dog they passed, they were home.

“Hey, welcome home,” Hunter called out when he heard the door open, his voice sounding distracted. When Sebastian entered the living room, he saw that he had his glasses on and he had the newspaper folded on the arm of the chair. “What’s a five letter word for ‘accept’?”

“I have no idea, babe,” he said with a soft laugh, moving to hold the cat so that Hunter wouldn’t see him. “What’s a… nine-letter word for ‘best boyfriend’?”

Hunter looked up, furrowing his brow. “What’d you do?” he asked.

He grinned at him, holding up the cat in front of him.

“What is…” he started slowly. “Whose cat is that?”

“Ours,” Sebastian said with a laugh. “What, do you think I would kidnap a cat?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you, honestly,” he said with a grin, shrugging.

“Wow, hurtful,” he teased.

“So, you got a cat?” he asked, shaking his head slightly to keep himself on the point. “When?”

“Today,” he said with a grin. In his arms the cat was starting to wiggle a bit, curious about his new surroundings, so Sebastian set him down on the back of the couch. “His shelter name is Tesla, but obviously if we hate that we can change it.”

Hunter watched the cat for a moment, reaching out to pet him, before looking up at Sebastian. “You’re insane, you know that?”

“What’s so insane about this?”

“You didn’t say a word to me,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t need to,” he said with a soft chuckle. “I _know_ you wanted a cat.”

“I did,” he admitted, shrugging.

“And I thought, you know, you like to surprise me with things—”

“Usually it’s like, flowers, or a candy bar you like, not an actual living creature,” Hunter interrupted.

“And? Those make me happy, this cat will make you happy,” he said, shrugging. “Think of it as a housewarming gift.”

“Apartment warming,” Hunter corrected with a soft chuckle, rising to his feet. The newspaper slipped to the ground, where Tesla went over to investigate it.

“Apartment warming,” he agreed, smiling at him.

Hunter moved to go around the couch to wrap his arms around Sebastian, pulling him in close to him. “Thank you,” he said softly.

“Mm, you’re welcome,” he said, leaning in to kiss him softly.

Hunter kissed him back, pulling back after a moment to look at him with a raised eyebrow. “I thought you hated cats, though,” he said.

“I don’t _hate_ cats,” he said. “I’ve just never seen the appeal.”

“Do you see the appeal of Tesla?”

They both looked over to where the cat had now jumped up onto the counter separating the living room and the kitchen and was batting at Sebastian’s keys with his paw, knocking them to the ground.

“Surprisingly enough, yes,” he said with a soft laugh. “Are we really calling the cat Tesla?”

“For now,” he said, shrugging. “I mean, he might already know it as his name.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him. “What, like he’ll answer to his name,” he said.

“Some cats are better about it than others,” he said, chuckling.

They sat down on the couch together, taking turns calling out to Tesla – his name as well as random words in happy tones of voice – to see if he came over or at very least even looked up to acknowledge they were calling him.

While Tesla didn’t seem to care about whether they were calling him by his name or “telephone pole” or “dick lick” (“Bas, don’t call the cat dick lick”), he did seem curious about them calling to him, so he went over and joined them on the couch. After staring between them, he seemed to decide that his best course of action would be to sit in between them, likely to maximize his pets.

“So, I don’t think that he cares that his name is Tesla,” Sebastian said with a soft chuckle.

“Yeah… probably not,” Hunter replied, smiling softly as he scratched behind the cat’s ear, causing Tesla to start purring loudly and move over closer to him.

“So you could name him whatever you want,” he said, shrugging.

“I could?” he echoed. “What about we?”

“I don’t know, babe, you’re probably better at this than I am,” he said. “I’ve never had a pet to name before.”

“That’s just all the more reason that you should be the one to pick a new name for him.”

Sebastian laughed softly, rolling his eyes at him fondly. “I’m not sure that that makes sense,” he said.

“It totally makes sense,” he said, laughing as Tesla suddenly noticed the drawstrings hanging down his torso from his hoodie and started pawing at them. He grabbed one of the strings, wiggling it for the cat to play with.

“Hold on, I’ve got a toy for that,” Sebastian said, getting up from the couch and coming back a minute later with a stick toy that had a bird on a string at the end. He also had a handful of toy mice, which he set down on the table beside the couch.

“How many toys did you get him?” Hunter asked him with a grin.

“A few,” he said, shrugging. “He was there with me, he helped me pick things out.”

“Yeah? That sounds accurate,” he said with a laugh, taking the toy and dangling the bird out over the floor for Tesla to play with.

“Definitely,” he said. “No laser toys, though. I’ve heard those actually, like, cause problems for cats.”

“Noted,” Hunter said with a small nod.

“I was tempted to get him a cat condo,” he said.

“And you say you’re not a cat person? You’re spoiling him,” he said.

Sebastian laughed softly, shrugging. “I don’t know what cats need, Hunt. I wanted us to be good cat parents,” he said.

“God, you’re ridiculous,” he said.

“Love you too.”

Tesla played hard for about ten minutes longer, eventually slinking back up onto the couch. He waited for Hunter to lean back, then climbed up onto his chest and fell asleep there. It looked extremely uncomfortable to Sebastian, but Hunter seemed happy to let him stay there.

“Hey,” Hunter said softly after a little bit, looking over at Sebastian. “C’mere. I want to kiss you.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him and chuckled, shifting in closer to him and leaning in to kiss him softly.

“I love you,” he said softly, lifting his arm to wrap around Sebastian and pull him in close to him. Tesla was woken up by the movement, but just looked up at them before going back to sleep.

“I love you too,” he said softly, leaning into his size.

“Thank you for reminding me what an amazing, thoughtful dork you are,” he said, grinning.

“I’m not a dork,” he protested with no heat behind his words.

“You are. You absolutely are. You’re a huge dork, and the love of my life,” he said, humming and kissing the corner of Sebastian’s mouth.

It was a pretty quick thing for them to adapt to having a cat around, and for Tesla to become completely comfortable in his new home, to the extent that, like many cats, he seemed to believe that he owned the place. They settled into an easy routine in the mornings where Hunter fed him and thus was his favorite person, and he would climb onto Sebastian’s shoulders while he was making coffee. It was nice.

Walking into the apartment and more often than not seeing Tesla curled up in Hunter’s lap told him that he had made the right choice in getting him.

* * *

 

_now._

Sebastian spent a lot of time in bed in the weeks that followed, and gradually he came to realize that he probably had the bulk of his memories back. Still, though, he wanted to have a little bit more time to sulk, so he didn’t mention this fact to anyone other than Nick and Jeff, and even with them it was mostly a matter of necessity, because they pestered him about it.

He was never going to have Hunter back. He had come to accept this fact.

“What happened to Mr. “I’ll Get Him Back No Matter What”?” Jeff asked him one afternoon after he had reiterated this fact to both Nick and Jeff.

“He remembered what it felt like losing Hunter the first time,” Sebastian said, shaking his head. “I mean, fuck. Could we have tried? Yes. But we didn’t, and we went our separate ways, and that’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” he said with a frown, his voice taking on a sense of urgency. “C’mon, when have either of you ever been the kind to give up?”

“Mm, how about that time that we, as a couple, gave up on each other, and our relationship?” he said with a raised brow, the look on his face challenging them to continue that line of argument.

“Okay, well, that’s different. And Sebastian without memories was pretty sure it was a dumb idea to break up, and he’s a smart guy,” Nick said.

Sebastian chuckled and shook his head. “Point of fact, Sebastian _with_ memories has a fuck ton more education, as well as general life experience, so it could be argued – pretty easily, might I add – that I am way smarter than I was without my memories.”

“Maybe so, but can you honestly tell me that you’re happier now than you were then?” Jeff pressed, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. “Were you happier when you left to go cliff jumping, or were you happier in that moment you woke up, before people told you that you and Hunter had broken up?”

“I was waking up in the hospital, I don’t think that I was really feeling too happy about my circumstances,” he pointed out.

Jeff huffed, looking at him with a frown. “Alright, bad example. But you know what I meant. Were you happier in that headspace, of where you and Hunter were still together and it was before things went bad?”

“Yes. Obviously, yes, I was happier when I had Hunter,” he said. “That doesn’t actually change anything, though. Because things _did_ go bad. We can’t just forget these couple of years happened.”

“Actually, you can. You did,” Nick pointed out brightly, chuckling.

“But really, though,” Jeff went on, rolling his eyes albeit fondly and reaching over to give Nick a smack. “The idea isn’t to just forget it. You can take that experience and just, like… move forward from it. You learned, and you’re both older now and more mature.”

Sebastian sighed and shook his head. “Sure, we are. And maybe part of that maturity is understanding that we had a good thing while it lasted but we don’t want it back, so we can move onto other things.”

“But you haven’t,” Nick said. “Neither of you has dated anyone else. Neither of you will admit it, but you _do_ want it back.”

“Or maybe this is just the two of you being… the two of you, and just wanting to have your double dates back.”

“That’s not what this is. But even if it was, you know, you can’t really blame us. Those double dates were kind of the best,” he said, chuckling.

“Sure, sure, whatever you say,” Sebastian said, shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, getting up. “Alright, well, I’m tired and this conversation is giving me a headache. You have a key, lock the door when you go. Goodnight.”

“Sebastian…” Jeff protested, but it fell on deaf ears as Sebastian went into the bedroom and cut off anything else with the click of the latch.

**

When Sebastian woke up in the morning, he felt like hell. His head hurt, he could barely breathe through his nose, and the prospect of getting out of bed was entirely unappealing.

Privately, he admitted to himself that maybe it was karma for, admittedly, being kind of a jerk to his friends when they were just trying to help him. He’d never admit that out loud, and he’d most certainly never admit out loud that he was sure they were right.

But of course, it wasn’t actually karma; it was just his body being shit. Every year he ended up getting one bad cold (or possibly the flu, but he didn’t care too much about the distinction when the important thing was that he felt like he was dying), and it seemed that now was the time for his annual illness.

He had previously made plans to go get lunch with Nick, but when Nick came by his place to pick him up and found him lying in bed complaining about how ill he felt, the other man immediately turned around and headed back towards the door.

“Aren’t you supposed to take care of your ailing friend? Or at least pretend to care?” he mumbled as he watched Nick starting to walk away.

“I am, and I do,” Nick said, shaking his head as he glanced back at him. Lifting his hand to indicate his phone, which was lit up and on a messaging screen. “See this phone? I’m texting the one person who can deal with you when you’re sick.”

“Wait, no,” he said, sitting up quickly. “Nick, no. Just leave me here to die, that’d be better.”

“You and I both know you want to be taken care of, but you know something? You’re insufferable when you’re sick,” he said.

“Ugh. C’mon, don’t text Hunter. I’m fine.”

Shaking his head, Nick turned back to him and held up his phone to show him that he’d already sent a message. “Well, too late,” he said. “Hunter will probably be here in a bit. Take care. Maybe clean yourself up a bit, don’t look gross when he shows up.”

“Such an ass,” Sebastian mumbled as he laid back down on the bed, pulling the blankets over himself.

“It’s for your own good.”

Nick lingered for a bit longer before he seemed to decide that Sebastian wasn’t going to say anything else and left, or maybe he got a message back from Hunter or something, but whatever it was, Sebastian couldn’t bring himself to care too much. He sat in the quiet, eventually having to pull the blanket away from his face with how warm and thick it made his breath feel.

With any luck, Hunter would decide not to come and they wouldn’t have to have an awkward encounter. Hunter was a smart guy, and he would no doubt realize that even if they had been hanging out a bit recently and were on their way back to being friends again, coming to take care of him while he was sick was a step too weird, too intimate.

He had nearly fallen asleep when he heard a key in the lock. He was sure that it had to be Jeff or maybe Nick having come back with NyQuil or Sudafed or at least tissues, until he heard Hunter’s voice. “Hey. Heard that you’re dying.”

In spite of himself, Sebastian had to laugh at that. “I’ve seen better days,” he admitted.

There were footsteps wandering around the main living area and kitchen of his apartment, and then finally Hunter appeared in the doorway to his bedroom. “Your apartment is kind of gross.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said.

“Just an observation,” he said with a small shrug. He had a bottle of NyQuil in his hands (Sebastian had to give him this: if nothing else, Hunter was thoughtful and caring, and always liked to be prepared. Sebastian would not be surprised to find that he’d brought a small pharmacy along with him) that he was ripping the protective seal on.

Sebastian pushed himself to sit up, his eyes following Hunter’s actions. He’d always had surprisingly careful hands. “Well… I never really put a whole lot of effort into putting it together.”

“I can tell,” he said with a small nod. “It’s… mostly the same stuff you had at our place.”

“I had to supplement it some, though. You had most of the practical furniture.”

Hunter let out a soft laugh at that. “True,” he said. “It’s not just that, though. I don’t know, it doesn’t seem… right.”

“Sorry?” Sebastian said.

“Don’t be,” he said. He measured some of the syrup into the cup before offering it to Sebastian.

He thanked him, taking the medicine before handing the cup back to him, knowing that he was the type to always rinse it out to ensure it didn’t end up sticky later. Sebastian used to joke on him about it, making comments about how much time out of his life he dedicated to being careful and tidy (and how he’d probably live longer than Sebastian would because of it, and Hunter always shut him down at that point).

When Hunter returned from rinsing the cup in the kitchen, they just looked at each other before Hunter moved on to look around the room. Sebastian watched him for a little bit, trying to see the place through his eyes; it was plainly decorated (read: barely decorated at all), but it did still seem, to him at least, to feel like a place that belonged to him; clothes tossed mostly in the hamper but also on the floor around it, a couple of books laying around, pictures and random knickknacks pinned up on the wall.

Sebastian watched Hunter for a bit until his eyelids grew to be too heavy, cold medicine always having a way of making him feel incredibly tired. Hunter had begun to hum softly to himself as he examined the things hung up on the wall, and it was a soothing soundtrack to fall asleep to.

**

The world felt unreal, his perception of reality seeming to float in the way that only happened in dreams or in that strange state of being that was somewhere between awake and asleep.

And he had to be dreaming, because he was in Hunter’s arms. He was being carried, Hunter bracing him against his chest like he weighed nothing. Hunter wouldn’t carry him. Not these days, at least.

He looked up at Hunter’s face, starting to say something, though his mind was too fuzzy to come up with words.

It still caught Hunter’s attention, though, and he looked down at him, offering him a small smile. “Go back to sleep,” he said softly.

So he did.

**

When Sebastian woke up next, he realized that he must not have been dreaming. Or maybe, he still was dreaming.

He was in his and Hunter’s bed (or just Hunter’s bed now, more accurately). The sheets smelled of Hunter’s detergent and his sweat. The latter should’ve been a bad thing, but it was weirdly pleasant; the whole thing felt like waking up in a memory.

Next to his face was a cat. _Tesla_.

Seeing that he was awake, Tesla headbutted his cheek, rubbing against him, clearly demanding being pet. He allowed Sebastian to pet him for a moment before standing and jumping from the bed to the floor, heading towards the door. When it became apparent that Sebastian wasn’t going to follow him, he started to meow.

After a few meows, Hunter stepped into the doorway to collect the cat, scooping him up into his arms. “Shut it, Bas is… Oh. Hey, you’re up,” he said, noticing that Sebastian was looking back at him. “Did he wake you up?”

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “He was just… hanging.”

“Good,” he said. “Yeah… I think he misses you. He’s started pouting when you come by and leave again.”

“Cats don’t pout.”

Hunter chuckled, rolling his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he said with a small nod. “Also, nice job kidnapping me.”

“I didn’t… Okay, I mean, I guess,” he said with a frown, shaking his head. “I don’t know. Your apartment just didn’t… seem right.”

“It’s where I live. It’s probably where I should be while I’m dying.”

“You lived here, too,” Hunter pointed out.

“A long time ago.”

“A year.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Still, it’s been a while. It was a weird choice bringing me here, is all I’m saying.”

“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” he said, shrugging. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, I guess,” he said. “You don’t… You don’t have to take care of me, by the way. You probably shouldn’t. You probably should’ve just ignored Nick’s message.”

“I wanted to do this. I’ve missed you,” he said. It seemed that his words caught them both off guard. Sebastian had been expecting more of a canned good Samaritan-type answer about it being the right thing to do.

They just looked at each other for a moment, neither sure what to say.

“I’ve got some soup for you,” Hunter said eventually.

“Did you make it from scratch just for me?” he said with a soft laugh, which devolved into a brief coughing fit.

After making sure that Sebastian wasn’t dying, Hunter just shook his head. “Maybe next time you get sick,” he said. It had been an ongoing joke between them; Hunter had always talked about his mother’s chicken noodle soup recipe that apparently worked wonders, but he had never actually made it himself. Any soup that was eaten while they were sick was bought.

“I’m probably going to die before I get your soup,” he said, letting out a sigh.

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

Hunter left the room and came back several minutes later, a bowl of soup in his hands, steam rising up from it. He offered it to Sebastian and he took it gratefully; if nothing else, he had to admit that Hunter was much better at taking care of him than he was at taking care of himself. “Alright, do you need anything else?” he asked him.

Sebastian paused for a moment before saying anything. If he said he didn’t need anything, Hunter would leave him alone, he knew that to be true.

His mind brought up memories of when they were in college, past times he’d come down with a cold. He’d whined until Hunter agreed to stay and spend all day in bed with him, watching the shittiest movies they could find. He’d fall asleep curled up against Hunter, and the cycle would repeat until he got better. Luckily for them both, Hunter apparently had an immune system of steel, and he rarely got more than a sore throat even in spite of breathing in all of Sebastian’s germs.

“Yeah, actually. I need you to pull up Netflix and watch something with me,” he said.

Hunter hesitated for a moment before nodding. “Alright, sure,” he said. He went around the bed, getting in beside Sebastian and grabbing the TV remote.

They settled on something to watch while Sebastian ate his soup, and over the course of the movie he had to fight the urge to gravitate towards Hunter. Tesla came and joined them on the bed, and having the barrier of the cat between them was a help.

Eventually, after a movie and a half, Sebastian grew drowsy again; the combination of the cocktail of medicines Hunter had him on mixed with the relaxing, familiar environment making it very conducive to fall asleep.

He closed his eyes, letting himself drift off. When he woke up again, he was curled up against Hunter’s chest. He was drooling on Hunter’s shirt, and he was wrapped up tightly in his arms. He looked up towards the other man’s face, finding that he was still awake, still watching whatever was on the TV.

“Sorry,” Hunter said, untangling himself from him and starting to get up from the bed. “I’ll go. I’ll sleep in the other room.”

“No… it’s okay,” he said softly, looking up at him. “Stay.”

So he did.


	9. Nine

_then._

Sebastian had, at one point, publicly declared that he wanted to be nothing like Nick and Jeff. He absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, had no interest in finding the person that he was going to spend the rest of his life with in high school (or at very least, he had no interest in _thinking_ that he had found the love of his life). The thought was at least mildly terrifying.

And to be fair, he wasn’t going to get ahead of himself. He knew that you needed to meet someone, get to know them, decide to be in a relationship, and be together for a while before you started making any sweeping declarations about whether you were going to be with them forever and ever or not.

When Hunter Clarington came to Dalton and took the Warblers by storm, he didn’t really think anything too much of it. Yes, he would be the first to admit that Hunter was attractive and he would most definitely be interested in hooking up with him in some form or another, but he had never anticipated anything really coming out of it. Especially not something serious in any form. There were just too many obstacles to that: he had no interest in getting serious, obviously, and Hunter was too unsure of his sexuality for him to be an option.

So for a while they bickered and argued with each other over stupid things about the Warblers’ choreography or their song selections or whatever else it occurred to them that they could potentially bicker about, and eventually it grew more fond.

Until eventually, it was more than fond.

Sebastian couldn’t quite remember what it was that they were talking about. Maybe the merits of folk rock music, or whether or not the right kind of shoes had the potential to make or break a performance.

The sort of thing, of course, that was fun to just talk about debate about, while they could still make a case for it being relevant Warbler business.

“Alright, you know, I hear what you’re saying, Hunt, but—”

“Sebastian,” Hunter cut him off, his voice taking on an odd note that Sebastian couldn’t quite place. There was also a strange look on his face, and for just a moment Sebastian was worried about what was going to come next.

“Yeah?” he asked after a moment, raising an eyebrow at him slightly.

Hunter looked down for a moment, looking like a moment like he might be experiencing physical pain.

“Hunt, c’mon,” he said, leaning over and giving him a light nudge. “Out with it.”

“Okay, okay,” he said with a soft chuckle, shaking his head. He ran his fingers through his hair, taking in a deep breath. “So… I don’t know, I might be getting the wrong vibes from you, which is cool if that’s the case, but… I’m developing feelings for you.”

He paused for a moment, looking at Sebastian both with the purpose of giving him time to stop him from going on if that was wanting to do, as well as just to try and gauge his reaction. Unfortunately for him, Sebastian was too busy trying to process if this was even happening to actually be able to give him a reaction.

“So, what I’m saying here is, like, do you want to go out with me sometime?” he finally asked, watching Sebastian closely.

Sebastian couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh at that (something that he realized was poorly timed when he saw the brief panic on the other boy’s face). “You mean, like… a date?” he asked, needing it to be clear and spelled out for him before he went any farther. “Romantic feelings?”

For his part, Hunter seemed to be a bit thrown off by it all as well, looking a little bit flustered as he nodded. “Romantic feelings, yeah,” he said. “And yeah, a date. Like, dinner or something, on me, and we could just… talk? Not about the Warblers or anything, just… about us? You don’t have to say yes or anything if you don’t want to, I know that it’s not really… your thing, dating.”

“Hunter,” he said, reaching out to put a hand on his arm; he wasn’t usually the type to go for physical contact like that, but it felt like the right thing to do in that moment to snap Hunter out of his spiraling thoughts. “Yes. Yeah, I’ll go on a date with you.”

“You will?” he asked, sounding more than a little bit surprised.

“Yeah. Why the hell wouldn’t I, right?” he said with a grin. “I mean, even if the date doesn't go well - which it will - then it'll still be a free meal."

Rolling his eyes at him, he nodded. "Right, of course," he said, reflecting his bright smile back at him. "Always have to have your eyes on the prize, don't you?"

"Of course," Sebastian said, humming softly. Teasingly, he added, "Related, what are your thoughts on putting out on the first date?"

"Oh, shut the hell up," he said.

"Alright, I'll mark that down as a soft 'maybe'," he said, grinning.

Hunter opened his mouth and then shut it again, and Sebastian was pretty sure that what he had stopped himself from saying would have been an innuendo. "Third date. I think third date is traditionally the one where it becomes socially acceptable."

Sebastian laughed softly, nodding. "Noted."

He didn't realize it then, but he had just given himself a life sentence, fating himself to be exactly the person he had had zero intention of being.

* * *

The realization that Hunter was going to be The One and that Sebastian had inevitably stumbled his way into settling down in high school was a slow one.

The first clue was when he settled into his bed the night after their third date, the thought occurring to him that he hadn't even thought about having sex with Hunter. Not a single part of him had been _expecting_ it the way that he might have been expected to. He found that he didn't care, he didn’t find himself thinking about what it would be like to have Hunter on top of him, or the other way around.

It wasn’t like it was a lack of interest, either. He had eyes, he knew that Hunter was incredibly attractive. And if he was anyone else, Sebastian was sure that he would gladly spend a few hours of his life in bed with Hunter and then call it a day. But no, some part of him was honestly glad to take it slow and not rush into something physical, knowing that doing so might lead to disaster.

He didn’t admit it to himself then, but that commitment to doing this the Right Way was the sure first sign that this was the real deal.

The first time that he was willing to look forward in his life and realize that he was becoming the person who found their forever before age eighteen was at graduation.

After months of worrying about the great big ‘what happens next’ and ‘are we going to be close, are we even going to be together’, everything had come together to this: Hunter and Sebastian, standing side by side with their families around them, taking pictures of them in their caps and gowns to commemorate and celebrate the end of one era and the beginning of another.

It hadn’t occurred to Sebastian before then what a vital part of his life Hunter had become.

At one point, his mother had stepped in close to him and asked softly, quiet to be sure that her voice didn’t carry to anyone other than him, “Do you want to take some more pictures that are just you? We have a couple, but, you know, just in case.”

It took him a moment to realize what she meant. _Do you want some pictures without Hunter so that you can pretend he wasn’t part of this if you break up in the future?_

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I think we’re good.” He was sure that his mother hadn’t asked it to be rude or offensive, it was just out of a concern that the memory of this day might later be tainted if things went south with Hunter and he couldn’t look at his graduation photos without being reminded of him; he got it, to a certain extent, but it still rubbed him the wrong way.

“You sure?” she asked. “I know it’s hot and you hate standing around for pictures like this, but…”

“No, it’s fine,” Sebastian insisted with a small nod, his arm pulling Hunter back in close to him, his boyfriend’s attention being pulled back to him from whatever conversation he had been having with his own family.

“Need something?” Hunter asked him, raising an eyebrow slightly.

“No, no, I’m good,” he assured him with a smile, his arm tightening around him.

“Okay…” he said, his brow furrowing a little bit in a look that was a combination of confused and fond that was far too cute to not do something about.

Turning to face him, Sebastian wrapped his arms around Hunter’s neck, pulling him in for a soft kiss, and Hunter easily responded in kind.

The fact was this: Sebastian was doomed from the moment that he met Hunter. His fate was sealed, and he was going to love that man for the rest of his damn life, and standing there after his graduation ceremony, looking forward to four more years loving life with Hunter, he knew that this was here to stay.

And even if something had happened to tear them apart, he wouldn’t want to erase Hunter from the memories; Hunter was a part of his life, had played a vital role in his high school career, and he wouldn’t want to ever deny that.

He faintly registered the click of a camera going off, and when he looked back at the pictures from the day later on, he would find that that was among his favorites of the bunch, second only to one taken a moment later, when they pulled apart: faces inches apart, small smiles on their faces as they looked at each other, love clear in their features.

* * *

 

_now._

After Sebastian got over his sickness, they still stayed around Hunter's apartment for a while, doing next to nothing besides just enjoying each other's company. It was a strange, but welcome, change of pace.

Everything had taken on a strange quality, the week that he had slept in Hunter’s bed fighting the flu having started to feel like some sort of fever dream that he only knew was real because even now, he was still in it.

(Or maybe, of course, he had _actually_ died rather than just having joked about it, and this was the afterlife. All things considered, having and afterlife that looked like Hunter's apartment, with the proper company included, would be a pretty good way to spend eternity. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, because it was still definitely Hunter's apartment rather than _their_ apartment.)

Hunter continued to coddle him for longer than was strictly necessary, but Sebastian wasn’t really going to fight him on it. It was undeniably pleasant to lay around on the couch or in bed, wearing Hunter's clothes since he only had what clothing of his own he had had on when he was brought over her, cuddled up against Hunter, allowing him to cook for him and feed him and get him medicine. It was domestic and wonderful, and he would be lying if he said that he hadn't missed it almost desperately; he had not realized just how much he missed it until he was here with Hunter, experiencing it all over again.

But eventually, he had to admit that he didn't need to stay there anymore. There was no reason for him to stick around, sleeping in Hunter's bed with him, especially not without the excuse of him being sick and needing tended to.

And the thing was this: he had reached the point again before all this that he was okay with being apart from Hunter again. He had once again made peace with the fact of the breakup, and he was at a place where he could move forward and be friends with him again. But being here with him all the time, especially in such intimate situations like bed sharing and being fed by hand by him, it was hard to keep his feelings on the right side of platonic.

“I should probably go home soon,” he said one morning as he helped Hunter load up his dishwasher, doing his best to make his voice sound casual.

Hunter didn't say anything for a moment, pausing his actions, and for a brief moment Sebastian almost thought that he was doing to dispute the words, to try and get him to stay. “Yeah... I guess you should,” he said finally. “Your apartment is probably missing you.”

It was all Sebastian could do to keep himself in check and not say something about how his apartment was cold and flat and did not have the depth to miss him. There were no living things there, not even a plant or anything, that would miss him, whereas Hunter’s apartment was so very full of life and love. Being there had felt like coming home, to Tesla, to Hunter, and to the goddamn cactus that Hunter had had around for ages.

“Yeah, probably,” he said, knowing that opening up that can of worms wouldn't end very well.

That was as far as the conversation went for the time being, both of them falling back into silence as the finished up with the dishes and gravitated back towards the living room. The Today Show was on, and it was easier to watch Kathy Lee and Hoda get drunk on national television than to make any actual moves towards parting ways.

But eventually, they had to acknowledge it. They both had lives that they needed to be getting back to, in one form or another. “So, since I drove you here, I can drive you back to your place,” Hunter said, looking away from the TV screen over to him.

“Um, no, you don't need to do that,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “I could just get, like, a cab, or something.”

“No, you couldn’t,” he said, a laugh escaping him at the very idea. “It doesn’t make sense for you to do that when you’ve got me right here willing to do it, the fare would be crazy high.”

Sebastian didn't really need a whole lot more convincing than that, being that letting Hunter drive him home would be more time spent with Hunter. “Okay, sure, sure,” he said. “But I owe you.”

“Whatever you say, Bas,” he said, and the familiar nickname on his lips made Sebastian want to climb into his lap and kiss him until leaving was the last thing on either of their minds.

God, he had it bad for him. He didn’t remember being this bad even at the very beginning of their relationship.

The drive back to his apartment was fairly uneventful. Hunter turned the radio up and they sang along, and at one point Sebastian was sure that he saw him reach over to take his hand before remembering himself. It was good.

But all too soon, he found himself in the familiar parking garage outside of his apartment building, and he started to get himself together to get out and head inside. “Hey, thanks for... everything, I guess. Bringing me back here, and... everything before that.”

Hunter let out a soft laugh and nodded, a hand coming up and waving his words off dismissively. “You would've done the same," he said. He paused for a moment and Sebastian was about to open the car door before he felt Hunter's hand on his arm. “Sebastian?”

“Yeah?” he asked as he turned back to look at him.

“Do you want...” he started and then trailed off, letting out a soft breath. “I feel like a teenager again with you.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“A good thing. Definitely a good thing,” he assured him, nodding quickly. “But just... I want to go on another date with you.”

Sebastian cut him off from saying more, his answer immediate. “Okay. Yes.”

“Glad to see you’re eager,” he said with a soft laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “But... I don't want this to be, like, a first date sort of thing.”

“Right, okay,” he said with a small nod. “We do kind of know way too much about each other to make the typical awkward first date small talk.”

Hunter laughed softly and nodded, pausing for a moment to collect his words. “I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to find a balance between picking up where we left off and starting new. I mean, we pretty rarely had actual dates once we were together for years, but.”

“I get it,” he said with a small nod.

“Okay, good, yeah,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “So, yeah. Not like a first date, but like a... thousandth date. We know each other, we know how we work together, and so we just... try this out. Try to put ourselves back together.”

“Thousandth date,” Sebastian repeated, chuckling. “Okay.”

“Thursday?”

“Thursday works.”

* * *

 

Thursday came and Sebastian suddenly found himself surprisingly nervous.

The thing was, he wasn't really sure what to expect out of this date with Hunter, having no idea of what they would be doing. He also wasn't sure how to dress for it. If the date was supposed to be against the typical concept of a first date, how was he supposed to act?

He didn't want to fuck it up, but he also didn't want to act like it was a huge deal and stress about getting it right. All he wanted at this point was to have Hunter back, to be able to go back to the way things had been before, the way things were /supposed/ to be.

He was growing incredibly tired of the emotional whiplash that was being apart from Hunter and going back and forth between wanting to move on and wanting to curl up in his arms and call that home.

He had also made the decision to not tell Nick and Jeff about this date. He didn't want to bring them into it and have their thoughts mingled in with all of his own tripping him up. Since he wasn't sure what was going to happen, he kind of just wanted to be able to have this be just about him and Hunter, and then start talking about it if it actually amounted to anything.

Hunter arrived at his door in a hoodie and jeans, and Sebastian was grateful that he’d thrown on a sweater and called it good enough. Really, Hunter in such casual attire was a thing to behold; he usually kept himself pretty sharply dressed, and while Sebastian loved seeing him dressed down (in all meanings of the phrase), it was a pretty rare occurrence.

“Hey,” Sebastian greeted him with a small smile.

“Hi,” he said back. “I thought about bringing you something, like a flower or something, but then I decided that might be a bit too cheesy. And anyway, you’re terrible about taking care of that sort of thing.”

“In fairness, that flower would’ve been dead anyway the second they cut it,” he said, shrugging.

“But you could’ve tried to help it last a little longer,” he pointed out.

“Sure, sure. I suppose I _could_ have,” he said with a laugh.

Hunter rolled his eyes at him, stepping back away from the door. “C’mon, we’ve got a big night ahead of us.”

“Do we, now?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, hopeful that he might be getting some information now about what they were going to be doing.

“Not really,” he said with a soft laugh. “I don’t know, I thought about planning something kind of elaborate, but… The fact is, I think we’d both be happier just kind of… being around each other.” He looked at Sebastian then, the look on his face a bit unsure and searching.

“Yeah. That sounds pretty good,” he said with a nod.

“Okay, good,” he said. “So, yeah… Keeping it pretty simple.”

“Simple how?” he asked, still prodding for details.

Hunter laughed softly and rolled his eyes. “Right, I nearly forgot how much you hate not knowing everything,” he said.

“It’s not nearly as fun as knowing everything,” he said, grinning.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “So… I thought that we could make dinner together, and then afterwards, just… hang out. I’ve got Jenga.”

“Are you sure Jenga is the best game for us to play, Hunt?” Sebastian asked with a soft laugh.

“Okay, sure, it sometimes gets a bit… tense, but that’s no reason we shouldn’t play it,” he said, shaking his head.

“Alright, sure, sure,” he said, allowing himself to be led down to the parking lot. Getting back into Hunter’s car, in the back of his mind he couldn’t help but think to himself how all of this felt so familiar, independent of the fact that he had quite literally been here in this exact location with Hunter a few days prior.

The car ride was similarly pleasant to the other day as well; the music was loud and the windows were down, so they couldn’t make conversation, but it was comfortable. There were no words needed, aside from those on the radio as they sang along, the way that road trips with Hunter had always gone in the past.

* * *

 

Hunter’s apartment was about the same as it had been when he was there earlier during the week. On the coffee table in the living room there was the Jenga box, ready and waiting. There was a blanket on the couch, and Sebastian could just picture Hunter curled up in it, watching a movie or reading a book; now, of course, instead the blanket was occupied by Tesla, who appeared to have tucked himself in nicely.

When he paused for a moment to linger in the living room, Hunter followed his gaze and laughed softly at the sight. “He’s an ass, but he knows the finer things in life,” he said, going over to the couch and giving the cat a gentle scratch behind the ear.

“Yeah, he and I are kindred spirits in that way,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh. “So… Chef Clarington, what are we making?”

“Chicken parm. Since I’m sure you’ve barely touched anything in your kitchen aside from the microwave in ages, I figured we could just do something simple,” he said.

“Probably a good idea,” he said. “It’d probably ruin the mood if I cut a finger off, or caught your apartment on fire.”

Hunter laughed softly, rolling his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, that would be pretty bad,” he said. “So, you’re going to be cooking pasta, mostly. It’s hard to fuck up pasta.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“No, Sebastian, it most certainly is not,” he said, shaking his head, though the look on his face betrayed him and made it clear how amused he was by him.

(If nothing else, though Hunter had always been a hardass, Sebastian had always had a way of getting past that and making him laugh.)

“I bet that I could really fuck up some spaghetti,” he said with a grin.

“Well, I’d like to eat, and I think you would, too, so… refrain from doing that,” he said.

Sebastian laughed softly, rolling his eyes and nudging him. “You never let me have any fun.”

“Yeah, because I know you do stupid things when you get to have your version of fun,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Like, for example, going and jumping off of a cliff, subsequently ending up in the hospital with amnesia.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t have done that one if you were around,” he admitted, nodding. “ _But_ , you’ve got to admit, it did work out pretty nicely.”

They walked into the kitchen together, and Sebastian watched as Hunter started to prep the chicken to be cooked.

“Did it?” Hunter asked.

“Of course,” he affirmed, nodding. “We probably wouldn’t be at this point if I hadn’t wanted to see you when I woke up.”

After considering it for a moment, he nodded. “Yeah… I guess that that’s true.”

The silence that sits between them for a moment isn’t quite uncomfortable, but it doesn’t feel right, either.

“Can we, like… talk about it for a second?” Sebastian asked.

“Yeah… yeah, we should probably do that,” he agreed, looking up from what he was doing for a moment.

“So, obviously, you asked me out on a date. Which means that you have some amount of feelings towards me,” he prompted, leaning against the counter and raising an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m… I’m not sure that my feelings ever went anywhere after we broke up. It’s… still, just like it was.”

“Like it was when we broke up, or before that?”

Hunter paused for a moment, looking down at the chicken and shaking his head slightly. “The issue was never whether or not we loved each other, you know that,” he said.

“Sure. But, like… You can’t deny that there was a change in how we felt, regardless of the love that was there,” he said. “You’re the one who was emphasizing this just weeks ago.”

“I know, I know,” he said, letting out a long breath. “I definitely don’t feel _that_ way. What I felt then was… it was almost ambivalence,” he admitted.

“Yeah. That’s… not a fun word for it, but it’s probably accurate.”

“Exactly. I mean… I think, for me, anyway, it was just kind of like… I’d gotten used to you being around. You were just a fact of my life, and I grew safe in the knowledge that you’d be there, until I almost didn’t care if you were.”

It hurt. Of course it hurt, and part of Sebastian wanted to cut the conversation off there, but the thing was that they had never really talked too much about it. They had never put the end of their relationship under a microscope, and he knew that if this was going to work, then they needed to. “I know that feeling,” he agreed eventually.

“So yeah. Now, it’s definitely not like that,” he said. “It’s… I’ll admit it. I don’t think what I’m feeling in regards to you now is healthy, either. It’s like a…” he paused, looking for the right words.

Sebastian nodded, biting his lip. “Desperation?” he asked, carrying on when Hunter nodded. “Like, now that I’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to have you back, it’s _all_ that I want, and all I can think about sometimes.”

“Yeah. Exactly that,” he said with a slow nod. “So, yeah. It’s not a healthy way to feel about someone.”

“Yeah, no, it’s not,” he agreed. “But I think that, like, long term, it won’t be like that. It’ll even out into something more appropriate.”

“Probably,” Hunter said.

“Assuming, of course, that you want there to be a long term,” he said, suddenly feeling a little bit unsure; just because Hunter wanted him around and had asked him on one date didn’t necessarily mean that he wanted to try out having a relationship with him again.

“I do,” he said quickly, nodding. “I definitely do. Best case scenario here, we kind of… pick up where we left off.”

Sebastian nodded, giving him a small smile. “Okay good,” he said. “So, here’s to finding a good happy medium between apathetic and desperate.”

Laughing softly, he nodded. “Happy medium,” he echoed, nodding.

Hunter went back to working on the chicken, and Sebastian just watched him for a bit, always having been fascinated by watching him cook. His hands were always so exacting in whatever he did, and watching him in the kitchen felt like its own art.

“Hey,” he said after a moment, feeling a rush of emotion that he couldn’t quite contain.

When Hunter looked up, raising an eyebrow at him, Sebastian moved forward, stepping into his space and tugging him closer. He leaned in, pressing his lips to his. It took a moment for Hunter to respond but when he did it was magic, his arms wrapping around him and holding him in close as their lips moved together.

Sebastian pulled back after a moment, looking at Hunter with a small smile. Seeing that his eyes were slightly moist, he raised an eyebrow. “Are you crying?” he asked.

“Shut up,” he mumbled, a hand lifting to rub at his eye. “I just…”

“You what?” he asked him.

Hunter let out a soft sigh, looking at him with a smile. “I love you.”

Grinning, he leaned in and kissed him again. “I love you too,” he said softly against his lips.

“Mhm, good,” he murmured. “Mm… let me get this in the oven. We need to eat.”

“I suppose,” he said, kissing him again softly before pulling back reluctantly.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of kissing each other passionately on and off intermingled with eating dinner, watching a documentary about sex trafficking, and playing Jenga. It was, by far, the strangest date he had ever had, but it also made him happier than he could remember being in a long time.

Sebastian fell asleep that night with his head on Hunter’s chest, laying on the couch, with a cat sleeping on top of him. Even though he’d complain to Hunter in the morning about how uncomfortable the couch was and how Tesla kept digging into his back with his claws, the truth was that he had never felt more happy and at home.


	10. Ten

_then._

Nobody had said anything for most of the evening.

Sebastian found himself counting the seconds that ticked by where neither of them moved, or looked at each other, or said anything. When the seconds became too many to be able to count, he ended up just staring at the clock and watching the minutes go by.

It was almost unbearable, and he was struck by the thought that he would so much rather be literally anywhere but where he was. At least, he thought to himself, when he was at work he was doing something, even if it wasn’t exactly something that he would like to be doing.

It isn’t like he doesn’t know how things could have been, either. If things were different than they were now, he could’ve curled up against Hunter, or settled himself in his lap and commanded his attention. He could’ve done _something_. Or hell, if things were different, it could have been a perfectly comfortable silence; they had never been the type of couple that needed to be talking constantly to be enjoying themselves and to feel sure that everything was alright between them.

And here he was instead, sitting with a full couch cushion of room between him and his boyfriend of several years, as if they were strangers. Most of the talking that _had_ happened was something like the awkward small talk of strangers, too; the weather, or how work had been but only to the extent of “it was fine.”

Eventually Hunter got to his feet and wandered to the bathroom, and it should not have been a relief to Sebastian to have his boyfriend out of the room. It should have been something more like an ache to be apart from him, he should have pouted at him when he tried to get away.

But he didn’t, and it wasn’t a surprise to either of them that he didn’t. Things were not the way there were supposed to be, and they hadn’t been for a while. And somehow, that was supposed to be okay. Somehow it had become the new normal and ultimately it was easier to ignore it than it was to talk about it.

Until it wasn’t.

When Hunter came back into the living room, he sat down on the arm of the couch, facing Sebastian.

Sebastian looked over when he felt his eyes on him, and for just a split second he was able to forget about the way that things were now, in favor of feeling like he was back in their early college days, when they were on a high born out of freedom and living in close proximity to each other. They would spend plenty of time just looking at each other and it inevitably turned into kissing and touching and usually fucking. That hadn’t happened in a while.

“Bas,” Hunter said, and his voice was quiet. His face was neutral in a way that looked far too forced to actually come across as casual.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking at him with a raised eyebrow even though he was pretty sure he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to talk to him about.

“This isn’t working.”

Sebastian took in a long breath and nodded slightly. “It’s not,” he agreed after a moment, for a lack of something better to say.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately,” he said, and he wasn’t looking at Sebastian anymore. His eyes were mostly unfocused, and Sebastian wondered if he was trying to look to the future that had felt more and more uncertain over the past few months. “And I think that it might be time that we… part ways.”

For a moment, Sebastian is seized by panic. It wasn’t as if this was coming entirely out of the blue. It wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him, either, but something about actually hearing the words out loud, coming out of Hunter’s mouth, made it suddenly far, far too real. “Hunter—” he started.

“Sebastian, please,” he said, shaking his head. He ran his hand through his hair, leaving it mussed, and in spite of the lack of physical contact they had had lately, Sebastian found himself wanting to reach out and fix it for him. “Don’t make this harder.”

“I don’t want to, I just…” he started and then trailed off, unsure of what he could say.

Hunter gave him a moment to see if he was going to figure out how to say what he needed to, but when he didn’t, he spoke again. “Exactly. It’s not… this is maybe just what’s best for us. Most people who date in high school don’t stay together forever.”

“Usually it’s a more… catastrophic end than this,” he commented, letting out a laugh that had no humor in it.

“Well, this is better, isn’t it?” he asked, managing to give him a small smile. “We didn’t have a great big fight, neither of us cheated on the other… We just outgrew each other.”

“We outgrew each other,” Sebastian echoed, testing out the words on his mouth to try and figure out for himself if it actually made sense. He wasn’t sure. “So… Yeah. I guess you have a point. We can part ways like this, and stay… amicable?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good, amicable split, and we can stay friends after this.”

Neither of them said it, but there was a moment of silence where they considered whether or not they _could_ stay friends. Not only was there just so much history between them, something that time would never make less awkward to think about or less of an elephant in the room, but frankly… Were they friends, right now, as it stood? How could you _stay_ friends with someone who you apparently mostly stuck around with out of habit?

Right now, Sebastian couldn’t really see it happening. But maybe, just maybe, eventually they could get back to that point. Maybe it was wishful thinking, being that he didn’t really want to imagine a version of his life where Hunter was not an active part of it, but he liked to think that maybe, after taking some time to sort out exactly who they were without each other, they could end up friends again.

Sebastian nodded slightly, looking over at Hunter and giving him a lopsided smile. “This isn’t really how I pictured it ending.”

“I didn’t picture it ending,” he said. After a moment, he added, “But… We’ll be alright. We’ll find other people who suit who we are now better than we do for each other.”

“Right,” he said with a small nod, not having any trouble imagining Hunter finding someone who would fit him perfectly. Idly, he wondered if that person would be another man, or if Sebastian truly had been an exception to the rule that was Hunter’s sexuality. Maybe he was deflecting.

The next half hour is spent trying to figure out how to move forward at this point. Most of their furniture was bought jointly, and the apartment was found and paid for jointly, so there were a lot of questions of what should be taken by who.

“You can keep the apartment,” Sebastian said eventually, part of him tempted to add on _‘and everything that’s inside of it_ ’. He was suddenly wanting to rip every last reminder of Hunter and their relationship out of his mind and out of his life; he knew that he wouldn’t be able to handle living in this apartment without him, the rooms haunted by the ghost of a relationship that he somehow couldn’t keep a hold of.

“Are you sure?” Hunter asked him, looking at him with a frown, his eyes seeming to search Sebastian’s face for any hint of what was going on in his brain.

“Yeah, definitely. It’s not a huge deal. And I mean… Tesla is already settled in here, and you know he doesn’t handle moving well, so…” he trailed off, shrugging. It was an easy excuse and it would work. After all, custody over Tesla was never going to be a question; while Sebastian had technically been the one to get him, the one to sign the paperwork adopting him, he was always Hunter’s cat.

“Okay…” he said, nodding slowly. “So, in order to be fair, I mean, you can have more of the furniture.”

“Right, um, thanks, I guess,” he said with a slight nod. “It’ll probably stay for a bit, though, so that I can… find somewhere to put it?”

Hunter nodded slightly, frowning. “Right,” he said. “You can… You don’t have to leave, immediately, either. This is still your apartment… or, for now, anyway, I guess… And you could sleep in the guest room?”

Holding back a comment about how he probably could have slept in the same bed with him and had the same amount of contact if recent nights were any indication, Sebastian nodded. “Thanks. But… I think I’ll find somewhere else to stay, that’ll be easier.”

“Alright… if you’re sure,” he said with a small nod.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “I think I’ll go pack a bag? We can figure out the finer details of who gets what and everything later.”

Hunter opened his mouth and shut it again, seeming to decide that just a nod would suffice.

Sebastian got to his feet, glancing back at him one last time before going into their bedroom and pulling a bag out from the closet and starting to throw clothes into it.

Tesla had been sleeping on the bed and woke up with the commotion, looking at him and meowing quizzically. Somehow that almost broke him.

He leaned over, scratching the cat behind his ear and smiling softly as he heard him starting to purr. “He’s all yours, you little asshole,” he whispered to Tesla almost fondly, before returning back to what he was doing.

When he had his things packed, he went back out into the living room, seeing Hunter still sitting there, watching him. He got to his feet and crossed the room over to Sebastian, bringing his hands up to cup either side of his face. Their lips met in a soft, tender kiss that was over before Sebastian could fully process what was happening.

The look on Hunter’s face was so soft and so, so fond, and for a moment Sebastian thought he was going to take it back. Everything was going to be okay, he had changed his mind, it would all be better from here on out.

“Goodbye, Sebastian,” he said softly, rubbing his cheek with his thumb before pulling back. “I… Regardless of how this all turned out, I want you to know that part of my heart is always going to be yours.”

Sebastian took in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. “And part of mine will be yours,” he said quietly.

He started walking then, some part of him hoping that Hunter would stop him. But as he grew closer to the door, he faced no resistance, and he had to accept that this was it. It was over.

He managed to get out to his car and drive for about ten minutes before he had to pull into a parking lot and just let it go. He cried more than he could ever remember crying before, the fact that it was over really hitting him then. He had just had his last kiss with Hunter, and he would probably only set foot in their apartment once or twice more. Hunter had even admitted to having feelings for him still, hadn’t he? It was all so _wrong_.

Sebastian let himself cry for about fifteen minutes before he stopped himself, telling himself that crying wouldn’t change anything and he just needed to deal with it and move forward. He took in a deep breath and pulled out his phone.

“Hey... Yeah, no, it’s all good… Listen, can I stay with you for a bit? Me and Hunter… Thanks, Nick.”

* * *

 

_now._

“This place is a shithole.”

“Wow, rude,” Sebastian said with a laugh, looking around his apartment with a grin. “It’s not _that_ bad, for a bachelor pad.”

“It just got worse, purely by virtue of your use of the term ‘bachelor pad’,” Hunter informed him, looking over at him with an expression that plainly read _not impressed_.

“Listen, I can’t help the fact that I never really put much work into decorating,” he said.

“Or cleaning,” he added. “And, actually, that kind of is your fault, Bas. Sorry to have to be the one to break it to you.”

“Worst boyfriend ever.”

“Most honest boyfriend ever,” Hunter replied with a grin.

A month had passed since they had had their date and things had been going well. They had, indeed, been able to essentially pick up right where they had left off, but this time being more mindful of their feeling as well as each other’s feelings. They talked, more openly that they had when things went bad last time. Things were better. So, so much better.

They had started out by making it clear to each other that they didn’t want to rush into anything. Just because their relationship before had been at a point where they had been happily cohabitating, it didn’t mean that they had to rush to get back to that state immediately.

That said, of course, when it came down to it, Sebastian spent essentially no time at his own apartment. He was pretty sure that he had not been home for more than an hour or two at a time since he and Hunter had gotten back together.

(There had been a whole conversation about that, too, in which they tried to decide whether or not that was being too clingy and if it fell under the category of being too clingy, but ultimately, they decided that they were both alright with it because neither of them particularly wanted that physical distance between them.)

After some joking around about Sebastian’s apartment being turned into a Chinese restaurant without his knowledge a la How I Met Your Mother, they were here: going through Sebastian’s apartment and starting to pack up his things so that he could, eventually, officially move back into their old apartment.

Hunter was walking through the apartment and picking up various things that had been tossed aside and left wherever they landed. “Honestly, Bas, I just… don’t understand how you live like this,” he said.

“Well, it helps that I’ve never spent that much time here,” he pointed out.

“I’m _sure_ that your mother cleaned this place up when she was here after you got out of the hospital,” he said. “That wasn’t that long ago, Sebastian, there’s no excuse for it.”

Sebastian just grinned at him, shrugging. “I’m not here to make any excuses,” he said, going over and taking Hunter’s hands, making him drop the shirt that he had been holding.

“Then what are you here for?” he asked him, and after a moment, he went on, “Actually, no, I know exactly what you’re here for. You’re here to get in the path of progress and entice me into sex in your terrible apartment.”

“It’s not _that_ terrible,” he said.

A loud laugh escaping his lips, Hunter rolled his eyes. “Ah, so that’s the part that you’re going to object to?”

“Well, I mean… you have to call a spade a spade, you know?”

“You’re an idiot,” he said, leaning in and kissing Sebastian. After just a moment, though, he pulled away, stepping back and pulling his hands free. “C’mon, we’re sorting things. We have to make _some_ progress.”

“Okay, fine, fine, lead the way, oh captain my captain,” he said, grinning.

“This is _your_ apartment, you should be leading this venture,” he pointed out, shaking his head but heading into the bedroom nonetheless.

“Sure, but you’re more… in charge, just in general,” he said with a shrug, sitting down on the foot of the bed as Hunter went and opened up the closet doors.

“I’m harder to distract than you are, certainly,” Hunter said, amusement clear in his voice even as Sebastian couldn’t see his face with him in the closet, already starting to pick through the clothes that were left there; already most of what Sebastian actually wore on a day to day basis was at Hunter’s apartment, so it had felt like a good place to start.

“And you’re more ruthless. You’ll make me throw out all the shit I don’t actually wear,” he said.

“True,” he said, glancing back at him. “Is that a bad thing?”

“It’s not,” he said, shrugging. “It’s just a fact.”

Hunter chuckled and nodded, pulling out a sweater from the closet and turning to face Sebastian with a raised brow. “What is this?”

“I got it at Goodwill. It’s a grandpa sweater.”

“How often do you wear it?”

“Mm… well, it’s been summer, so…”

“Sebastian, I swear to god,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head.

“Okay, toss it. It’s kind of scratchy.”

Hunter felt the material and nodded. “Yeah, good call. Even I would refuse to cuddle with you if you were wearing that.” He tossed the sweater to the ground for the beginnings of a ‘donate’ pile.

“Okay, one: false, you could never,” he said, grinning. “And two: because of the scratchiness or because of the ugliness?”

“Both,” he said, turning back to find another article of clothing. He held it up, furrowing his brow. “This… is mine.”

“Pretty sure it’s mine now, I’ve had it for a while,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh, shaking his head. “I mean, did you miss it?”

“Yeah, actually, I did, asshole,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head. “I thought that I’d left it somewhere.”

“You did. You left it in my car,” he said brightly. “And I kept it, because it’s warm and soft.”

“Did you keep wearing it, you know, while we were broken up?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I did,” he said, shrugging. “I’m not going to apologize for that.”

“I wasn’t asking you to, I was just wondering,” he said. He sounded smug, and Sebastian decided not to comment on it, just watching as Hunter put the hoodie into the keep pile.

After a few more random things that were sent to the donate pile, Hunter pulled out another shirt.

Looking at it for a moment, Sebastian shrugged. “Eh, donate it.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head.

“No?” he echoed. “Why not? It’s a really old shirt.”

“Yeah, exactly,” he said, walking over and holding the shirt up in front of Sebastian. “I will grant that it might not fit you right anymore.”

“So… donate it,” he said, looking up at him with a bemused expression.

“No,” he said firmly. “You know what this shirt is? This shirt is the same shirt you were wearing that time you talked me into skipping class to go to my parents’ lake house.”

“Okay…” he said slowly, looking up at him with a grin. “God, you are just… the most bizarrely sentimental person I have ever met.”

“Shut up,” he said. “That was just… a really good day.”

“I won’t deny that,” Sebastian said with a small shrug, chuckling softly and reaching up to pull Hunter down into a kiss.

“And that shirt is a good memento of that good day,” Hunter added once he pulled back from the kiss.

“I think we have pictures. That’s what you always tell me when I want to hold onto ticket stubs and shit,” he said.

“That’s different,” he said, shaking his head. “And you refused to get a shadow box or something for those.”

“Hunt, I have no fucking clue what a shadow box is,” he said, chuckling softly.

“You do know, you’re just being difficult,” he said.

“Guilty,” he said. He wrapped his arms around Hunter, pulling him in closer to him. “We can keep the shirt.”

Hunter grinned at him. “Thank you.”

“Now, can we take a break?”

“We’ve barely started,” he pointed out, shaking his head.

“But I’m already bored,” Sebastian protested with a grin. “And you’re very, very attractive.”

“You’re not bored, you’re just horny,” he returned.

“Same difference.”

“Not really,” he said, chuckling. “C’mon, Bas, at least let’s get through your closet?”

“C’mon, Hunt,” he said, imitating Hunter’s tone of voice, “at least hand stuff before going back to it.”

Hunter laughed and smacked his hand away from where it was sneaking down to undo his pants. “We aren’t in high school, you’re not distracting me with a handjob.”

“Aren’t I?” he asked with a grin, kissing him again.

“You’re a child, Bas.”

“Don’t say that, that has gross implications for you,” Sebastian said with a chuckle. This time when his hands went to Hunter’s pants, he didn’t stop him.

Thanks to a lack of pressure paired with a remarkable ability to get distracted, the process of packing up Sebastian’s apartment and getting everything moved over to their apartment, all in all, took about six months, finishing up around the time that his lease ran out. So, really, a case could be made for them not having rushed into it.

The day that they were done, after they had gotten rid of Hunter’s couch and moved their old, better couch – which had been the last remaining item to be moved and of course the largest, which was why it was the last thing anyway – Sebastian let himself flop down onto the soft seat, his limbs dramatically splaying over the cushions and onto the floor.

“I’m sweaty and tired,” he mumbled. “I’m going to have a bruise from when you pretty much dropped the couch on me.”

“That’s not what happened,” Hunter said with a laugh. He sat himself on the arm of the couch seeing as Sebastian was taking up the entirety of the rest of the couch.

“It basically is. I’m dying, Hunter,” he said with a laugh.

“I somehow doubt that, but say the word, and I’ll kiss it back,” he said.

Sebastian grinned up at him. “Don’t think I won’t take you up on that,” he said.

“Oh, I know you will,” he said. “Now, stop sweating all over our couch and go take a shower.”

“Are you going to join me?” he asked, grinning.

“Nope, I’m going to enjoy having this couch all to myself again,” Hunter replied.

“Ah, I see how it is. You want to get rid of me,” he said, rolling his eyes at him teasingly. “Fine, fine. Enjoy.” He got to his feet, stopping to kiss Hunter before heading back for the bathroom.

He found himself somewhat rushing through the shower; it wasn’t like he needed to, they didn’t have any great big plans for the evening; in fact, he was pretty sure their entire plan was just to sit around and bask in the fact that they had actually finished moving everything and they were officially living together again. But still, he wanted to spend every minute of the evening with Hunter, even if they were doing nothing.

When he was out of the shower and dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, he ventured back out into the living room to find Hunter still sitting on the couch, though he was now properly seated on the cushions.

“Hey, you,” he greeted him.

Hunter startled a little at the sound of his voice cutting into the silence, chuckling at himself when he realized that it was just Sebastian. “Hey,” he said. “How was your shower?”

“It was pretty good. Water pressure amazing as ever,” he said with a soft chuckle. “What were you thinking so hard about, hm?”

“Oh,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head slightly. “When I was rearranging things to get you moved back in here, I found something.”

“What kind of something?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he pulled his legs up on the couch, folding them under himself.

“This kind of something,” he said, leaning forward and opening the drawer on their coffee table to procure a small drawstring bag.

Sebastian blinked a couple of times as he watched Hunter fiddling with the strings, trying to place where he had seen the item before. He realized at about the same time Hunter got the bag open. The ring. That same ring he had found, years ago now. Simple, white gold, subtle diamonds set in the metal.

When Hunter pulled out the small item inside the back, it was confirmed for him; that was the ring. The same one. The one that most of the time he had nearly forgotten about, though some nights he had remembered and wondered about.

“That’s…” he started, trailing off.

“An engagement ring, yeah,” Hunter said, looking down at it and chuckling softly. “I bought this… when we were still in college.”

“Yeah?” he asked, suddenly feeling like he had lost all of his words.

“Yeah. I knew way back then that I wanted to marry you,” he said. “I was just too chickenshit to actually ask.”

“You were nervous? Like I would’ve ever said no?”

“I don’t know. You could have,” he said with a shrug, shaking his head. “You’re… unpredictable.”

Sebastian nodded slightly. He stared down at the ring held between Hunter’s fingers, not sure what to say.

“And then time passed, and I still hadn’t asked you, and eventually… it didn’t really feel right, anymore.”

“Right,” he said with a slow nod, not wanting to think about it. He still wasn’t even sure what was going on; he liked to think he knew where this was going, but by now, he knew better than to assume.

“I held onto this, anyway. I don’t know why. Maybe it was just some sort of fucked up sentimentality,” he said, shrugging.

“Maybe,” he said.

“But it kinda doesn’t feel right,” he said, shaking his head. “Like, hiding it like this, I mean.”

“You weren’t really hiding it,” he pointed out.

Hunter shrugged. “It still felt like it, at least kind of,” he said. “Point is… I know, I know we’ve talked up and down about not rushing into anything, but…”

“But…” Sebastian prompted him.

“If the past couple years have shown me anything, it’s that _this_ is what I want, this is where I want to be,” he said, his voice gaining more confidence. “Everything I felt for you never went anywhere, and I was always going to find my way back to you, so… I don’t want to waste another second.”

He paused to look at Sebastian, who just nodded quickly for him to go on.

“I want to have this promise, with you,” he said. “I want to make great big plans with you. I don’t want to, for a second, risk losing you again. I want to have you, wearing this ring, every day, and I want you to remember every time you look at it that I love you. I _love_ you, no matter if I say it every day or not. So… will you marry me?”

Sebastian leaned forward and kissed him, cupping his face in his hands. When he pulled back, he whispered against his lips, “Not to be a stickler for tradition or anything, but I think you were supposed to get on one knee.”

“I should’ve known you’d be an ass even as I propose to you,” he said, letting out a laugh that was only a little bit exasperated. “You haven’t even said yes yet.”

“Presumptuous,” he teased before kissing him again. “Yes. Yes, definitely, yes.”

“That’s more like it,” Hunter said with a laugh. He pulled back for long enough to get the ring onto Sebastian’s finger, then pulled him into a tight embrace. “God, I love you.”

Sebastian wrapped his arms around him in return, letting out a content sigh. “I love you too, Hunt,” he said. “You huge nerd.”

“You love me being a nerd,” he said, grinning before kissing him again.

They spent the rest of the evening tangled up together like that. There were things to do and calls to make – fuck, some of their family didn’t even know they were back together – and Sebastian was pretty sure Hunter still needed to shower, too, but for now, all of that could wait. He had Hunter well and truly back, and the band on his finger was a reassurance that everything would be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading, folks! i've already got something else huntbastian cooking up in my brain, so hopefully that'll see the light of day soon. also there is an additonal oneshot in this verse that i've got going, so look out for that! as always, if you have any prompts or requests or anything, you can reach me here or on my tumblr (burgerteddy)!


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